Choosing between his time and her time? Paid and unpaid work of Danish couples

In terms of paid and unpaid work, Danish men and women work the same number of hours per week. But while men do most paid work, women do most unpaid work. We investigate the interaction between paid work and unpaid work for Danish working couples, using the 2001 Danish Time Use Survey. We test several competing theories regarding the intra-individual and intra-household allocation of paid and unpaid work: comparative advantage, bargaining, assortative mating and ‘doing gender’. In addition, we divide unpaid work into ordinary housework and childcare and analyse whether these two activities interact differently with paid work hours. In general, the results favour the assortative mating and ‘doing gender’ theories, but do not support the bargaining or comparative advantage theories. Furthermore, results clearly show that housework and childcare are separate activities with different interaction effects.Labour supply, paid and unpaid work, intra-household allocation of time

The relationship between home and work in an enlarged Europe: a quantitative analysis

'Das vorliegende Projekt untersucht die komplexe Beziehungsstruktur zwischen Erwerbsarbeit und Privatleben in acht west- und osteuropäischen Ländern. Zunächst werden die Determinanten geschlechtsspezifischer Arbeitszeitmuster in den ausgewählten Ländern analysiert. Als Datenquelle dient eine internationale, im Rahmen des Fünften Rahmenprogramms durchgeführten Umfrage (‚Households, Work and Flexibility' HWF). Im zweiten Kapitel untersuchen wir auf Basis der gleichen Datenquelle mögliche Einflussfaktoren auf die Berufszufriedenheit und fokussieren dabei geschlechtsspezifische Differenzen. Ausgehend von offiziellen Datenquellen (EUROSTAT und OECD) werden im dritten Kapitel Erwerbsmuster aus einer Lebensverlaufsperspektive im Überblick dargestellt. Im letzten Kapitel nutzen wir diese Hintergrundinformationen sowie eine zusätzliche Datenquelle (Eurobarometer für Zeitverwendung, EB 60.3 und CCEB 2003 für die Kandidatenländer), um zu einem besseren Verständnis des länderspezifischen Erwerbsverhaltens von Frauen im Lebensverlauf beizutragen.' (Autorenreferat)'The following report contributes to our knowledge about labour market behaviour in an enlarged Europe with a special focus on gender aspects and on cross-national settings embedded in different welfare state architecture. First, we deal with the determinants of cross-country variations in gendered employment patterns by drawing on the 'Households, Work and Flexibility' (HWF) survey. Second, we use these data to investigate which factors make employees more or less satisfied with their jobs, with a special focus on gender aspects. Third, we look at employment patterns from a life course perspective in an enlarged Europe by using official data from various sources (OECD, Eurostat). Finally, drawing on the Eurobarometer Surveys on Time Use EB 60.3 (EU-15) and CCEB 2003 (Candidate Countries), we investigate female labour market participation over the life course.' (author's abstract)

Urbanisation and changes in fertility pattern in Poland and in the selected countries of Western and Southern Europe

Since the beginning of the 1990s profound changes have occurred in reproductive behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe. They involve a sudden fall in the fertility rate, accompanied by an increase in the age of mothers giving birth to their first child, and a growth in the percentage of extramarital births. A similar course of changes in reproductive behaviour was observed almost a decade earlier in the countries of Southern Europe (Greece, Spain and Italy), and at the beginning of the 1960s in the countries of Western Europe (e.g. France). The aim of the study is to show the spatial changes in the fertility pattern in Poland compared to the selected European countries - Italy, Spain and France. Since new fertility patterns take hold most quickly among the inhabitants of large cities, as a result of the weaker effects of tradition and earlier formation of social norms owing to suburbanisation processes, the analysis of changes in reproductive behaviours will be conducted in the context of changes in urbanisation level. The time frame of the study encompasses an extended duration, especially taking into account the period of 1970-2010. For the comparison of large cities, data from 2010 or the nearest available were examined

Effects of education on second births before and after societal transition: Evidence from the Estonian GGS

This article examines the influence of educational attainment and enrolment on second births in Estonia, comparing the patterns before and after the onset of the societal transformation of the 1990s. While many Northern and Western European countries have shown a positive relationship between female education and second births, this pattern has not been found in Central and East European countries. Against that background, Estonia offers an interesting case with noticeably high second birth intensities for highly educated women. In the state socialist period, after controlling for the influence of other characteristics, including the partner's education, women with tertiary education were found to have higher second birth intensity than women from any lower educational strata. In the postsocialist period, the difference has grown smaller, but women with tertiary education still display a significantly higher transition rate to second birth than their counterparts with secondary education. Following the presentation of empirical findings, the article discusses the mechanisms that could underlie the observed relationship between education and fertility decisions in the changing societal context. The analysis employs microdata from the Estonian Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), conducted in 2004-05.economic transition, educational attainment, Estonia, Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), second births

Essays in Population Dynamics and Life Course

The topic of this thesis is population dynamics (natural population change and migration) and connection between life course events (childbirth, partnership, marriage, and migration) in Europe. The topics of ageing, mortality, fertility, and migration in Europe have received considerable scholarly attention at the country level. Yet population dynamics are largely unexplored at the subnational level while policies addressing population change in Europe have not been assessed through the wholistic lens of population dynamics. Life course events are known to follow each other to a certain degree, yet the connection between life course events still calls for exploration. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of the connection between different life course events and demonstrate the population dynamics and its connection to population policies in Europe. We look at the population dynamics and policies in Europe and then proceed to explore the relationship between life course events in Central and Eastern Europe. We finish with an investigation of the association of family statuses and migratory experience with subjective well-being measures in Belarus. We create an interactive map of average population dynamics in Europe using the Eurostat data. We also fit seemingly unrelated bivariate ordered probit as well as ordered logistic regression to the Generations and Gender Survey data from Central and Eastern Europe. The key findings are the following. We find that the centre-periphery principle holds nationally and supranationally where urban areas and Western and Northern Europe exhibit population growth whilst rural areas and Central and Eastern Europe as well as Southern Europe have more depopulating regions. We establish a negative association between pro- natalist policies and population resilience to demographic change. We also find that a positive association between family formation events (marriage and childbearing) and spatial mobility in Central and Eastern Europe. Lastly, the findings from Belarus suggest that a combination of family statuses and categories of (dis-)advantage (gender and migration status) are linked to subjective well-being outcomes more significantly than separate determinants. In general, looking at the population dynamics and policies and the associations between life course events as well as their connection to subjective well-being sheds light on the complexity of life course in Europe. In future work, this approach of interconnectedness may lead to a research agenda encompassing additional demographic outcomes and broader research in life course

Does the European marriage pattern explain economic growth?

This article scrutinizes the recently postulated link between the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and economic success. Multivariate analysis of 4,705 demographic observations, covering women's marriage age, female lifetime celibacy, and household complexity in 39 European countries, shows that the most extreme manifestations of the EMP were associated with economic stagnation rather than growth. There is no evidence that the EMP improved economic performance by empowering women, increasing human capital investment, adjusting population to economic trends, or sustaining beneficial cultural norms. European economic success was not caused by the EMP and its sources must therefore be sought in other factors.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from CUP at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9335236&fileId=S0022050714000564

Assessing alternative dissimilarity indexes for comparing activity profiles

When making between-group time use comparisons, it is often useful to have a single measure that summarizes the dissimilarity between the two groups. This paper examines the robustness of four alternative dissimilarity indexes. The main finding is that unweighted indexes, such as the Szalai T, are sensitive to the level at which activities are aggregated, while weighted indexes are robust to the level of aggregation.Dissimilarity index, time allocation, time-use

Do time use patterns influence fertility decisions? A cross-national inquiry

Birth rates are falling throughout the western world. There is no definitive answer as to why this is so. This paper investigates whether time use analysis could offer a useful perspective. It explores the way parenthood affects time allocation in four countries with different work-family policies, using data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS) World 5 series to compare the impact of children on adult time in Italy, Germany, Norway and Australia. It considers whether fertility decisions may be influenced by i) the gap between parents and nonparents in total paid and unpaid work undertaken, ii) how paid and unpaid work is divided between mothers and fathers, and iii) the proportion of total male and female work time that is paid before and after parenthood, and conducts multivariate analysis to isolate the effects of nationality, sex and parenthood. The study is very preliminary, but the results suggest that domestic gender inequity and low female workforce participation are associated with lower fertility and may affect parity progression. Further research using more extensive and detailed time use analysis could make an important contribution to understanding of fertility decline.time use, children, fertility decline, gender, work-family, comparative policy analysis