Sibship size and status attainment across contexts: Evidence from the Netherlands, 1840-1925

This paper investigates the effects of sibship size on status attainment across different contexts and subgroups. Resource dilution theory predicts that with larger sibship size, children’s status outcomes fall. However, the empirical record has shown that this is not always the case. In this paper we have tested three alternative hypotheses for neutral or even positive effects of sibship size on status attainment on the basis of a large-scale registry database covering the period of industrialization and fertility decline in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Our findings offer support for the family developmental cycle, buffering by kin groups, and socio-economic development as alternative explanations to the resource dilution hypothesis.child well-being, family size, Netherlands, nineteenth century, resource dilution theory, sibship size, status attainment

Waarom Jan en Cor met elkaar trouwden

Who migrate to a larger city or another country? How do marriage partners find each other? In order to research such questions over the centuries, data are collected in archives, transcribed and stored in large historical databases. All over the world there are about thirty databases with data from individual life courses, among which the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN). Working with these databases is not always easy. This inaugural lecture discusses three strategies: In the curriculum of the historical faculties working with these databases needs more emphasis, subsets which are easy to handle by historians must be made out of these datasets and more cooperation is needed between scientists each with their own specializations. The basis for this cooperation must be laid by a common Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) which is introduced here for the first time in the Netherlands. In 2008 Kees Mandemakers was appointed professor of Large Historical Databases at the Faculty of History and Arts of the Erasmus University Rotterdam by the International Institute of Social History (IISH)

Maternal education and sibling inequalities in child nutritional status in Ethiopia

In many societies child nutritional status varies between siblings because of parental gender and birth order preferences and differential intra-household resource allocation. While more educated women have been found to improve children's nutrition overall, it is unclear whether they also buffer sibling inequalities in nutritional status. We study the interplay between parental preferences, maternal education, and sibling inequalities in child nutritional status in Ethiopia, the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa, with high rates of malnutrition, rapid socio-economic change, urban fertility decline, and low, but increasing female education. We base our analysis on a pooled sample of the 2011/12, 2013/14, and 2015/16 waves of the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey using 8275 observations from 4402 children between the age of six months and 9 years old nested in 1687 households. Results from multilevel and fixed effects models show sizable gender and birth order differences in nutritional status. Boys had a better nutritional status than girls and earlier born children had a better nutritional status than later born children, both in terms of height-for-age and weight-for-age. More educated mothers buffered sibling inequalities in nutritional status according to birth order, but not according to gender. The height penalty of being a higher order child disappeared for children whose mothers had about eight years of education or more (primary school finished/some secondary school). The beneficial impact of maternal education, counteracting some within-family inequalities, asks for continued investments in girls' and women's education

Does education buffer the impact of disability on psychological distress?

This paper investigates whether education buffers the impact of physical disability on psychological distress. It further investigates what makes education helpful, by examining whether cognitive ability and occupational class can explain the buffering effect on eduction. Two waves of the 1958 British National Child Development Study are used to test the hypothesis that the onset of a physical disability in early adulthood (age 23 to 33) has a smaller effect on psychological distress among higher educated people. In total 423 respondents (4.6%) experienced the onset of a physical disability between the ages of 23 and 33. We find that a higher educational level cushions the psychology impact of disability. Cognitive ability and occupational class protect against the effect of a disability too. The education buffer arises in part because individuals with a higher level of education have more cognitive abilities, but the better social position of those with higher levels of education appears to be of greater importance. Implications of these findings for the social gradient in health are discussed.The full-text of this article is not available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page

Source Oriented Harmonization of Aggregate Historical Census Data: a Flexible and Accountable Approach in RDF

Historical censuses are one of the most challenging datasets to compare over time. While many (successful) efforts have been made by researchers to harmonize these types of data, a lack of a generic workflow thwarts other researchers in their endeavors to do the same. In order to use historical census data for longitudinal analysis, a common process currently often loosely referred to as harmonization is inevitable. This process becomes even more challenging when dealing with aggregate data. Current approaches, whether focusing on micro or aggregate data, mainly provide specific, goal-oriented solutions to solve this problem. The nature of our data calls for an approach which allows different interpretations and preserves the link to the underlying sources at all times. To realize this we need a flexible, bottom-up harmonization process which allows us to iteratively discover the peculiarities of these types of data and provide different interpretations on the same data in an accountable way. In this article, we propose an approach which we refer to as source-oriented harmonization. We use the Resource Description Framework from (RDF) as the technological backbone of our efforts and aim to make the process of harmonization more graspable for others to stimulate similar efforts

Verschillen tussen ouders en kinderen in de rapportage van steun en contact

Gegevens over intergenerationele steun en contact in 4.055 ouder-kind dyades afkomstig van de Netherlands Kinship Panel Study zijn gebruikt om verklaringen te toetsen voor rapportageverschillen. De verklaringen richten zich op bronnen van vertekening en onnauwkeurigheid. De resultaten laten geen systematische overschatting zien van steun en contact door ouders vergeleken met kinderen, zoals voorspeld door de generationele inzet-hypothese. Rapportageverschillen blijken wel te kunnen worden toegeschreven aan vertekeningen die samenhangen met een neiging tot zelfvermeerdering, persoonlijke normen op het gebied van familiesteun, ontevredenheid over ontvangen steun en gepercipieerde relatiekwaliteit. Verder blijken laagopgeleide ouders en kinderen minder nauwkeurig te rapporteren dan hoog opgeleide