Changing Work–Family Equilibria and Social Inequality

Abstract

Profound changes in families and in employment patterns challenge the conventional view of work and family as two separate spheres, and finding a balance between them has become vitally important in economic, social, and even demographic terms for today's societies. Current trends also potentially alter families' role in societies' stratification system and overall inequality. Only recently research started to systematically link demographic and employment behavior and the family to the consequences for societies' inequality structure. Often the empirical impact is much less straightforward than parts of the literature suggest, and for a detailed understanding lifetime inequality and stratification rather than distributional inequality will need to gain major attention.