Periods of high and persistent unemployment since the late 1980s as well as an upward trend in the share of temporary employment characterize recent labor market instability in Europe. This paper analyzes the associations between timing to a second birth and changing economic environment. In...

This special collection of Demographic Research is devoted to the issue of how economic and employment uncertainties relate to fertility and family dynamics in Europe. The collection is based on contributions to a workshop held in Berlin in July 2009, which in turn was stimulated by the onset of...

We examine the impact of precarious work (low income and job security satisfaction) on the intention to have a first child. We consider a direct and an indirect effect; the latter is mediated by partners’ conflict behaviour, conflict level, and partnership quality. We assume that a...

Using both analysis of the effect of lagged economic and current educational characteristics and analysis of life-course changes in these characteristics, this study provides insights into the theoretical debate concerning the relationships between men´s and women´s economic activity and...

After the state socialist regime of Poland collapsed in 1989, the nation’s total fertility rate plummeted from 2.1 to 1.27 by 2007. Simultaneously, Poland severely reduced social service provisions and restricted access to family planning. A three-month mixed-methods research study was...

In this paper we apply optimal matching techniques to individual work-histories in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), with a two-fold objective. First, to explore the usefulness of this sequence-oriented approach to analyze work-histories. Second, to analyze the impact of involuntary job...

This paper helps document significant improvements in the child low-income rate as well as the significant decrease in the proportion of children who relied on public assistance in the United States during the 1990s. Many disadvantaged groups of children were less likely to live in poor or...

Economic and sociological theories of marriage have long emphasized the impact of women’s education and employment on union formation. In this study, we explore the relevance of the female economic independence hypothesis to explain women’s patterns of entry into marriage and...