No abstract

The extent to which mothers progress to a second child varies greatly between European countries. Although both institutional and economic context are believed to be partly responsible for these differences, available research on economic conditions and fertility mostly focuses on first births and studies on family policy and fertility have hitherto insufficiently addressed population heterogeneity. Combining longitudinal microdata from the Harmonized Histories with contextual data on labour market uncertainty and family policy, this paper uses discrete-time hazard models to analyse the impact of economic and institutional context on second birth hazards of 22,298 women in 7 European countries between 1970 and 2002. Particular attention is paid to variation in the contextual effects by level of education. We find that aggregate-level unemployment and temporary employment reduce second birth hazards, particularly for low-and medium-level educated women. Family policies are positively related to second birth hazards. Whereas family allowances stimulate second births particularly among low educated mothers, the positive effect of childcare is invariant by level of education.

The extent to which, and the reasons why, children help to care for their parents are examined in an extensive range of literature. Although care for parents essentially takes place in parent–child dyads, many of these studies acknowledge that the amount of care a child gives is generally the outcome of collective decisions in multiple-child families. However, to our knowledge, no research in Europe enhances our understanding of how sibling characteristics influence an individual child's care-giving. Using data for 14 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, the present study relates pre-care-giving sibling characteristics to children's subsequent start of giving care. This longitudinal approach allows correction for the endogenous nature of time-changing predictors. The analysis demonstrates that daughters start to care more often when they have brothers instead of sisters. This pattern of gendered intergenerational care particularly applies to southern European countries. We also observe that both pre-care-giving parent–sibling frequency of contact and geographic distances predict children's care-giving transition strongly. Children who are closer to their parents than siblings in terms of contact and proximity have higher odds of care-taking. Finally, being the only child without a job enhances the start of care-giving as well. The results suggest that sibling characteristics are an important factor in explaining intergenerational care differences between children in Europe.

Intergenerational solidarity is crucial to address the needs of ageing people. Numerous studies have identified geographic distance between parents and children as an important determinant of intergenerational support. This paper aims to examine to what extent parents' functional disabilities and children's support involvement relate to changing geographic parent–child proximity. We also take a comparative approach to study patterns of geographic mobility of parents and children across Europe. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression analysis is performed on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for 15 countries. The analysis shows that rapid declines in the functional abilities of parents often lead to intergenerational coresidence. In addition, we find that children start and continue to support most frequently when proceeding to coresidence, although similar results appear for moves leading to a parent–child distance closer than 5 km. Moves bringing parents and children closer together are most prevalent in southern European countries. In contrast to our expectations, the analysis also suggests that parental health declines connect more with moves to coresidence in central and northern European countries compared with the southern region.

Although siblings may differ considerably, the similarities between them are often an important source of emotional support in one's life and influence one's life course trajectories. In this review on the topic of sibling relationship and cross-sibling effect interactions, we aim to encourage research interest and facilitate knowledge building. We begin our review by highlighting how the parental home may induce differentiation between siblings. Next, we illustrate the theories explaining sibling similarities and differences and discuss the factors that stimulate these. Throughout the review, we do not only highlight the complex mechanisms by which siblings imitate yet differentiate themselves, but also mutually relate to their life courses and education. New understandings of how similarities between siblings can simultaneously act as powerful influences and negative examples are provided.