Multilevel models for cross-national comparisons: the association between individual and national-level demographic characteristics in fertility and partnerships

Multilevel models are increasingly used in social sciences and demography to both account for clustering within higher level aggregations and evaluate the interaction between individual and contextual information. While this is justifiable in some studies, the extension of multilevel models to national level analysis- and particularly cross-national comparative analysis- is problematic and can hamper the understanding of the interplay between individual and country level characteristics. This paper proposes an alternative approach, which allocated countries to classes based on economic, labour market and policy characteristics. Classes influence the profiles of three key demographic behaviours at a sub-national level: marriage, cohabitation and first birth timing. Individual data are drawn from a subset of the Harmonized Histories dataset, and national level information from the GGP contextual database. In this example, three country classes are extracted reflecting two Western patterns and an Eastern pattern, divided approximately along the Hajnal line. While Western countries tend to exhibit higher levels of family allowances albeit accounting for a lower share of spending which is associated with lower marriage and later fertility, Eastern countries generally show a higher share of spending but at lower absolute levels with lower cohabitation rates and early fertility

Latent class models for cross-national comparisons:the association between individual & national-level characteristics in fertility & partnership

Multilevel modelling techniques such as random models or fixed effect are increasingly used in social sciences and demography to both account for clustering within higher level aggregations and evaluate the interaction between individual and contextual information. While this is justifiable in some studies, the extension of multilevel models to national level analysis — and particularly cross-national comparative analysis — is problematic and can hamper the understanding of the interplay between individual and country level characteristics. This paper proposes an alternative approach, which allocates countries to classes based on economic, labour market and policy characteristics. Classes influence the profiles of three key demographic behaviours at a sub-national level: marriage, cohabitation and first birth timing. Woman level data are drawn from a subset of the Harmonized Histories dataset, and national level information from the GGP contextual database. In this example, three country classes are extracted reflecting two Western patterns and an Eastern pattern, divided approximately along the Hajnal line. While Western countries tend to exhibit higher levels of family allowances albeit accounting for a lower share of spending which is associated with lower marriage and later fertility, Eastern countries generally show a higher share of spending but at lower absolute levels with lower cohabitation rates and early fertility

Latent class models for cross-national comparisons:the association between individual & national-level characteristics in fertility & partnership

Multilevel modelling techniques such as random models or fixed effect are increasingly used in social sciences and demography to both account for clustering within higher level aggregations and evaluate the interaction between individual and contextual information. While this is justifiable in some studies, the extension of multilevel models to national level analysis — and particularly cross-national comparative analysis — is problematic and can hamper the understanding of the interplay between individual and country level characteristics. This paper proposes an alternative approach, which allocates countries to classes based on economic, labour market and policy characteristics. Classes influence the profiles of three key demographic behaviours at a sub-national level: marriage, cohabitation and first birth timing. Woman level data are drawn from a subset of the Harmonized Histories dataset, and national level information from the GGP contextual database. In this example, three country classes are extracted reflecting two Western patterns and an Eastern pattern, divided approximately along the Hajnal line. While Western countries tend to exhibit higher levels of family allowances albeit accounting for a lower share of spending which is associated with lower marriage and later fertility, Eastern countries generally show a higher share of spending but at lower absolute levels with lower cohabitation rates and early fertility

Contraceptive confidence and timing of first birth in Moldova: an event history analysis of retrospective data

Objectives: To test the contraceptive confidence hypothesis in a modern context. The hypothesis is that women using effective or modern contraceptive methods have increased contraceptive confidence and hence a shorter interval between marriage and first birth than users of ineffective or traditional methods. We extend the hypothesis to incorporate the role of abortion, arguing that it acts as a substitute for contraception in the study context.Setting: Moldova, a country in South-East Europe. Moldova exhibits high use of traditional contraceptive methods and abortion compared with other European countries.Participants: Data are from a secondary analysis of the 2005 Moldovan Demographic and Health Survey, a nationally representative sample survey. 5377 unmarried women were selected.Primary and secondary outcome measures: The outcome measure was the interval between marriage and first birth. This was modelled using a piecewise-constant hazard regression, with abortion and contraceptive method types as primary variables along with relevant sociodemographic controls.Results: Women with high contraceptive confidence (modern method users) have a higher cumulative hazard of first birth 36?months following marriage (0.88 (0.87 to 0.89)) compared with women with low contraceptive confidence (traditional method users, cumulative hazard: 0.85 (0.84 to 0.85)). This is consistent with the contraceptive confidence hypothesis. There is a higher cumulative hazard of first birth among women with low (0.80 (0.79 to 0.80)) and moderate abortion propensities (0.76 (0.75 to 0.77)) than women with no abortion propensity (0.73 (0.72 to 0.74)) 24?months after marriage.Conclusions: Effective contraceptive use tends to increase contraceptive confidence and is associated with a shorter interval between marriage and first birth. Increased use of abortion also tends to increase contraceptive confidence and shorten birth duration, although this effect is non-linear—women with a very high use of abortion tend to have lengthy intervals between marriage and first birth

Diverse pathways in becoming an adult: the role of structure, agency and context

Although the transition from education to work has been a topic of much research, there is still lack of understanding regarding experiences of recent cohorts of young people. Moreover, much of the debate has focused on the polarization of youth transitions, at the neglect of a large group of young people who fall outside this dualism. This paper introduces a diverse pathways view offering a more comprehensive understanding of changing youth transitions and examines how transitions are shaped by interactions between structure and individual agency. The study is based on data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UK-HLS) using sequence analysis to identify transition patterns among cohorts born in 1980-84 and 1985-1989. Five distinct clusters could be identified, differentiating between those who participate in extended education, two pathways dominated by continuous employment, either directly after completing compulsory schooling at age 16 or after some further education, and two pathways characterized by exclusion from the labor market (either through prolonged experience of unemployment or inactivity). Both structural and agency variables are associated with variations in transition patterns, pointing to the need of conceptualizing the role of the agent as well as that of structures and resources for a better understanding of the processes underlying the selection into different pathways

A socio-ecological model of agency: The role of psycho-social and socioeconomic resources in shaping education and employment transitions in England

This study examines the role of structural and agentic resources in shaping school-to-work transitions in England. We ask to what extent are young people able to steer the course of their lives despite the constraining forces of social structure, and how satisfied are they with their lives following the completion of compulsory schooling. Drawing on data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England we use sequence analysis of monthly activity data to identify differences in the timing and sequencing of education and employment transitions. We identified six distinct pathways, differentiating between an academic track, three pathways involving further education and training, as well as a work-focused transition and a group of young people who were over a long period not in education or training (NEET). The findings suggest that not all young people are inclined to follow an academic track and instead select into pathways involving vocational training or further education, enabling them to experience competence and life satisfaction. For others (about one in 10), however, the lack of socioeconomic and psycho-social resources is too overwhelming and they encounter long-term experience of NEET or are not able to transform their educational credentials into employment opportunities. The findings highlight that in addition to considering structural constraints it is important to conceptualise the role of the agent for a better understanding of variations in youth transition

Trends in Demographic and Health Survey data quality:an analysis of age heaping over time in 34 countries in Sub Saharan Africa between 1987 and 2015

Abstract Objective This paper evaluates one aspect of data quality within DHS surveys, the accuracy of age reporting as measured by age heaping. Other literature has explored this phenomenon, and this analysis build on previous work, expanding the analysis of the extent of age heaping across multiple countries, and across time. Results This paper makes a comparison of the magnitude of Whipple’s index of age heaping across all Demographic and Health Surveys from 1986 to 2015 in Sub-Saharan Africa. A random slope multilevel model is used to evaluate the trend in the proportion of respondents within each survey rounding their age to the nearest age with terminal digit 0 or 5. The trend in the proportion of misreported ages has remained flat, in the region of 5% of respondents misreporting their age. We find that Nigeria and Ghana have demonstrated considerable improvements in age reporting quality, but that a number of countries have considerable increases in the proportion of age misreported, most notably Mali and Ethiopia with demonstrate increases in excess of 10% points

Longitudinal methods for life course research : a comparison of sequence analysis, latent class growth models, and multi-state event history models for studying partnership transitions

Júlia Mikolai was a PhD student at the Department of Social Statistics and Demography at the University of Southampton and was funded by a +3 Scholarship provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J500161/1) while completing most of this work.This paper qualitatively compares and contrasts three methods that are useful for life course researchers; the more widely used sequence analysis, and the promising but less often applied latent class growth models, and multi-state event history models. The strengths and weaknesses of each method are highlighted by applying them to the same empirical problem. Using data from the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey, changes in the partnership status of women born between 1955 and 1964 are modelled, with education as the primary covariate of interest. We show that latent class growth models and multi-state event history models are a useful addition to life course researchers’ methodological toolkit and that these methods can address certain research questions better than the more commonly applied sequence analysis or simple event history analysis.PostprintPeer reviewe

Evaluation of the partnership histories in the Centre for Population Change GHS time series dataset

A combined time series of the General Household Survey datasets from 1979 to 2007 has been compiled by the Centre for Population Change (CPC). This dataset includes, along with socio-economic variables, the demographic histories collected in the Family Information section of the GHS questionnaire over the GHS rounds covered, in harmonised form. The present paper evaluates both the internal consistency of the marriage and cohabitation histories and their correspondence with external sources.The data are weighted using new weights generated by CPC for the analysis of these data. Overall, cumulative proportions married by each age for the cohorts of 1951-55 to 1966-70 correspond well with ONS figures for England and Wales, though there are some systematic disparities in selected years. As found in an earlier study, retrospective estimates from the 2000-07 histories of the proportions cohabiting at a point in time are somewhat above the cross-sectional estimates at survey 5 and 10years before

Partnership patterns in the United States and across Europe: the role of education and country context

Patterns of partnership formation and dissolution are changing dramatically across the Western world. Some scholars have argued that women's trajectories of union formation and dissolution are diverging by education, with the higher educated postponing but eventually marrying and the lower educated more likely to cohabit or divorce if they do marry. At the same time, the variation in partnership behavior has also increased across countries, suggesting that country context plays an important role. Here, we use latent class growth models to compare the educational gradient of partnership trajectories in the United States and 14 countries in Europe and investigate the role of education and country context. Our results indicate a consistent positive educational gradient for partnership patterns showing the postponement of marriage, regardless of whether marriage was preceded by cohabitation, but a less consistent gradient for patterns reflecting long-term cohabitation and union dissolution. Although the US results show evidence of an educational divergence in marriage and union dissolution, the evidence from the other countries is weak. In addition, country context explains more of the variation in class membership than education, with context becoming more important over time. The divergence in behaviors across country contexts suggests that social, cultural, political, and economic developments are essential for understanding changes in partnership formation and dissolution