Change in Personal Culture over the Life Course

Prior literature finds stability in personal culture, such as attitudes and values, in individuals’ life courses using short-running panel data. This work has concluded that lasting change in personal culture is rare after formative early years. This conclusion conflicts with a growing body of evidence for changes in personal culture after significant life course transitions, drawing on long-running panel data. To integrate these conflicting findings, the current study develops and applies a life course adaption model of personal culture, accounting for early imprinting and the continued possibility for change. Drawing on rich data from six long-running panel studies from five countries (BHPS, HILDA, PSID, SHP, SOEP, UKHLS) and 428 measures of personal culture, I test the theoretical expectations using mixed-effects modeling and an individual participant data meta-analysis. Results support the life course adaption model. Although lasting, non-transitory, within-individual changes in personal culture are relatively small compared to stable between-individual differences, I find strong support for the proposition that individuals change persistently in their personal culture as they move through the life course. These changes are partly dependent on prior biographical experiences. Finally, personal culture fluctuates substantially from year to year. Change in personal culture is increasingly varied for younger birth cohorts.Support Network for Interdisciplinary Social Policy Research (FIS)Peer Reviewe

High incidence of Angina pectoris in patients treated with 5-fluorouracil - A planned surveillance study with 102 patients

Objective: Angina pectoris, arrhythmic sudden death and myocardial infarction, all these cardiac events have occasionally been reported during 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) chemotherapy. Underlying mechanisms leading to these events are unknown; damage to the myocytes or vasospasms have been discussed. Methods: 102 consecutive and unselected patients were monitored with 12-lead ECG, echocardiography and radionuclide ventriculography prior to the first cycle of 5-FU chemotherapy and 3 months from baseline. Results: 19% of the patients developed reversible symptoms of angina pectoris during treatment which lasted up to 12 h after cessation of the infusion. Most of the 19 patients showed corresponding ECG changes. 6 out of the 19 patients with severe angina pectoris had subsequent coronary angiography. In none of these patients the coronary angiography showed coronary artery disease, but it showed low ventricular function (ejection fraction <50%) in 2 patients. The ejection fraction did not increase overtime. Arrhythmias were screened for with Holter monitoring during 5-FU chemotherapy. The frequency of bradycardia and ventricular extrasystoles increased significantly (p < 0.05) during treatment compared to arrhythmias in Holter monitoring 3 months later. Furthermore the Qtc time in the ECG 3 months later was significantly prolonged (p < 0.05) compared to baseline values. Conclusions:The incidence of angina pectoris in patients during 5-FU treatment seems higher than previously suspected. As myocardial ischemia can be fatal, attentiveness to these symptoms and immediate treatment are crucial. Copyright (C) 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel

Panel Data in Research on Mobility and Migration: A Review of Recent Advances

Panel data has become the gold standard for causal assessments of complex human behaviour in quantitative social science. The objective of this review is to examine and discuss how panel data and related methods contribute to the identification of causal relationships in spatial mobility research. We illustrate this by providing a succinct overview of recent progress in spatial mobility research, drawing on panel data. The review outlines research from a number of scholarly disciplines that maps patterns, establishes determinants and assesses the impact of spatial mobility for a range of outcomes. Studies presented in this article are used to decipher complex interdependencies over the life course, scrutinise the selectivity of migrants, and shed light on the interplay between individual agency, social embeddedness and socio-structural contexts. The article concludes with a set of critical issues for future research. * This article belongs to a special issue on "Identification of causal mechanisms in demographic research: The contribution of panel data"

Gender and changes in household wealth after the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation in Germany

Objective: To document gender differences in how economic wealth changes following the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation in Germany. Background: Wealth can be an important resource to deal with the adverse economic consequences of union dissolution. Marital property regimes usually ensure that both partners receive a share of the couples' wealth following a divorce. The dissolution of cohabiting unions is not governed by such rules in most countries, including Germany, which may lead to a more unequal division of wealth following the dissolution of cohabitation as compared to marriage. Method: The analysis consists of multivariable fixed-effects regression models based on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N = 6,388 individuals) for the years 2002 to 2017. Results: Changes in wealth are relatively similar for men and women after the dissolution of marriage. The dissolution of cohabiting unions is related to losses in wealth for women, but not for men. Controlling for post-dissolution processes, gender inequality increases after the dissolution of cohabitations. Conclusion: Union dissolution is associated with wealth losses. The legal protection of the economically weaker spouse in marriage prevents gender inequality in these wealth losses. Lacking such legal protection, cohabitation is associated with gender inequality in the consequences of dissolution

The long reach of class origin on financial investments and net worth

In this study, we argue that parents’ class position may influence the type and timing of their offspring's investments in financial assets. These investments may facilitate net worth accumulation beyond direct transfers, contributing to the intergenerational reproduction of social positions. We test these expectations using retrospective life history and prospective panel data for 14 countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We apply discrete-time event history analyses to examine the first financial investments’ timing over the life course and conduct a mediation analysis of net worth. We find that individuals from advantaged parental classes are more likely to invest in stocks and mutual funds. When considering horizontal differentiation, managerial classes with relatively more economic capital than cultural capital are more likely to invest in financial assets. However, we do not find robust evidence for distinct timings of financial investments by parental class. Advantaged parental class is positively associated with net worth in later life. However, this association cannot be explained by the specific investments of individuals from advantaged parental classes.Support Network for Interdisciplinary Social Policy Research (FIS) of the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social AffairsDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschafthttps://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Peer Reviewe

Who Opts Out? The Customisation of Marriage in the German Matrimonial Property Regime

This study examines the prevalence of marital contracts across marriage cohorts (1990–2019) in Germany. We further investigate the characteristics of spouses who signed a marital contract. Using cross-sectional data from the German Family Panel (pairfam, 2018/19), we employ complementary log–log and multinomial logistic regression models to predict the prevalence and the type of marital contracts. The results show that 5% of all married couples opt out of the default matrimonial property regime by signing a contract in Germany. Differentiating between contract types, most couples either specify a separation of property (40%) or modify the default community of accrued gains (31%). We find an increase in the prevalence of marital contracts across marriage cohorts. The decision to opt out of the default is strongly positively associated with self-employment that often requires the customisation of asset ownership structures within marriage. Married individuals with prior divorce experiences are more likely to opt for the separation of property, indicating that the awareness of the economic consequences of divorce promotes the individualisation of marriage. Our results are in line with the cross-national trend towards customised marriages, although the trend in Germany is less pronounced than in other countries

Wealth in Couples: Introduction to the Special Issue

The assumption that economic resources are equally shared within households has been found to be untenable for income but is still often upheld for wealth. In this introduction to the special issue “Wealth in Couples”, we argue that within-household inequality in wealth is a pertinent and under-researched area that is ripe for development. To this end, we outline the relevance of wealth for demographic research, making the distinction between individual and household wealth. Drawing on a life-course perspective, we discuss individual wealth accumulation within couples and its links to family-demographic processes, the institutional context, and norms on pooling and sharing. We conclude with a brief summary of the main findings from the special issue and highlight implications for demographic research and for future research in this field.Peer Reviewe

Interdependencies in mothers' and daughters' work-family life course trajectories : similar but different?

We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Grant No. RYC-2015-18254); the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Grant No. RTI-2018-097664-A-100); and the Support Network for Interdisciplinary Social Policy Research (FIS) of the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.Women's life courses underwent substantial changes in the family and work domains in the second half of the twentieth century. The associated fundamental changes in opportunity structures and values challenged the importance of families of origin for individual life courses, but two research strands suggest enduring within-family reproduction of women's family behavior and work outcomes. We revisit this issue by studying two complementary types of intergenerational associations in women's combined work-family trajectories. On the one hand, we examine similarities across mothers' and daughters' work-family trajectories to address the direct within-family reproduction of female life courses (intergenerational persistence). On the other hand, we examine systematic associations between work-family trajectories that are typical in each generation to address intergenerational interdependencies beyond direct reproduction that account for individual and societal constrains and opportunities that each generation faced (intergenerational correspondence). We use a within-dyad approach to sequence analysis and examine combined work-family trajectories between ages 18 and 35 of two generations of women, born in 1930-1949 and in 1958-1981, within the same family drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Overall, we find evidence of small but nontrivial persistence in work-family trajectories across generations that is partly attributed to within-family mechanisms of reproduction. In addition, we find correspondence across typical trajectory patterns of each generation, without daughters necessarily resembling their mothers' trajectories. The strength of the intergenerational associations varies by social background. Our research improves and broadens our understanding of the reproduction of female life courses across generations

Wealth of children from single-parent families: Low levels and high inequality in Germany

Families’ economic wealth is a resource that can provide children with crucial advantages early in their lives. Prior research identified substantial variation of wealth levels between different family types with children from single-parent families being most disadvantaged. The causes of this disadvantage, how much the disadvantage varies between children and how the non-resident parents’ wealth may potentially reduce the disadvantage remain unclear. To address these research gaps, we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2002–17) to examine the level of and inequality in wealth for children from single-parent families using recentred influence function regression and decomposition analysis. We replicate earlier findings of a large wealth disadvantage for children in single-parent families. We find that the wealth disadvantage can be mainly explained with compositional differences in household income and employment characteristics. Beyond level differences, inequality between children from single-parent families is higher than for other family types and this inequality can only partly be explained by observed demographic and socio-economic characteristics. When considering the wealth of non-resident parents, the wealth disadvantage of children in single-parent families is reduced but remains substantial