Gendered work-family life courses and late-life physical functioning: A comparative analysis from 28 European countries

Uccheddu, Damiano; Emery, Tom; Gauthier, Anne H.; Steverink, Nardi

doi:10.1016/j.alcr.2022.100495

Cited by 7 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…We grouped countries into six welfare regime types based on Esping-Andersen ( 1990 , 1999 ) and others (e.g., Ferrera, 1996 ), which is a grouping that also largely overlaps with typologies suggested by feminist scholars, including Leitner ( 2003 ) and Bambra ( 2004 ), and has been used in previous studies, like Uccheddu et al ( 2022 ). Southern European regimes included Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such changes are likely less pronounced for men, resulting in more similar male work-family trajectories over the earlier life course (Van Winkle and Fasang, 2021 ). Despite this, prior work on work-family trajectories has largely ignored gendered cohort effects (e.g., Uccheddu et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Theoretical Notionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies including both men and women generally concentrated on a single country (Switzerland: Madero-Cabib et al, 2016 ; Germany: Engels et al, 2019 ; US: Fasang and Aisenbrey, 2021 ) or compared just two countries (McDonough et al, 2015 ; Aisenbrey and Fasang, 2017 ). When they included more countries and covered different welfare regimes, they again focused on a specific gender (e.g., women; Ice et al, 2020 ) or relied on relatively small sample sizes for some countries while also not examining how work-family trajectories differed across social groups other than men and women (Uccheddu et al, 2022 ). Only a few studies involved multiple social groups (e.g., based on gender, education and/or birth cohort) and multiple countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Work-family trajectories across Europe: differences between social groups and welfare regimes

Firat,

Visser,

Kraaykamp

2023

Front. Sociol.

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IntroductionWork and family trajectories develop and interact over the life course in complex ways. Previous studies drew a fragmented picture of these trajectories and had limited scope. We provide the most comprehensive study of early-to-midlife work-family trajectories to date.MethodsUsing retrospective data from waves 3 and 7 of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we reconstructed work-family trajectories from age 15 to 49 among almost 80,000 individuals born between 1908 and 1967 across 28 countries. We applied multichannel sequence and cluster analysis to identify typical trajectories and multinomial logistic regression models to uncover their social composition.ResultsThe results revealed six common trajectories. The dominant and therefore standard trajectory represents continuous full-time employment with having a partner and children. Women, the lower educated and persons from conservative and liberal welfare regimes are underrepresented in this trajectory, whereas men, higher educated people and those from social-democratic, Eastern European and Baltic welfare regimes are overrepresented. The other trajectories denote a deviation from the standard one, integrating a non-standard form of work with standard family formation or vice versa. Mothers in a stable relationship generally work part-time or not at all. When mostly in full-time employment, women are more likely to be divorced. Lower educated persons are less likely to have work-family trajectories characterized by full-time work and a non-standard family, yet more likely to be non-employed for large parts of their life with standard family formation. Younger cohorts are underrepresented in non-employment trajectories, but overrepresented in part-time employment trajectories along with a partner and children as well as full-time employment trajectories with divorce. Individuals from Southern European and liberal regimes are more likely to be non-working and self-employed partnered parents and those from social-democratic regimes are more likely to be full-time employed divorced parents. We also found pronounced gender differences in how educational level, birth cohort and welfare regime are associated with work-family trajectories from early to midlife.DiscussionOur findings highlight the socially stratified nature of earlier-life work-family trajectories in Europe. Potential implications for inequalities in later life are discussed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Notionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Work-family trajectories across Europe: differences between social groups and welfare regimes

Firat,

Visser,

Kraaykamp

2023

Front. Sociol.

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“…Group-specific SA typologies therefore are particularly useful for descriptive purposes to illuminate which life course patterns signify the most prominent life course experiences of social groups. In contrast, pooled analyses across groups, for example including men and women or multiple countries in one pooled analyses are generally preferable when combining SA-typologies with regression-based methods in a second step (e.g., Kapelle and Vidal 2021;Madero-Cabib and Fasang 2016;Muller et al 2020;Raab and Struffolino 2020;Uccheddu et al 2022). When the clusters serve as dependent variables, pooled analyses allow estimating coefficients by gender or country to quantify the degree of differences and statistical significance of men and women's differential probability to experience a given life course type.…”

Section: Guidelines For Sa When Combining It With Kobmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

Rowold¹,

Struffolino²,

Fasang³

2022

Preprint

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This paper improves the understanding of how prior life-courses that unfold over several decades relate to inequalities between groups in old age. Economic inequality in old age results from many processes that unfold over individuals’ prior life-courses in given institutional settings. With population aging, such economic inequalities in mature adulthood and old age become increasingly relevant. We propose a step wise process combining the strengths of Multichannel Sequence Analysis to analyse life-courses with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, which has long been established to analyse group inequalities in outcomes. To illustrate the proposed procedure, we apply it to the case of Gender Pension Gaps in Italy and West Germany. Our analysis reveals that a large part of the gap in both countries is due to highly gender-specific work-family patterns; male-typical life courses receive higher average pension income while female-typical life courses are worse rewarded. On the other hand, only a minor share of the gap is associated with different pension rewards of men and women with the same work-family life course pattern. Thus, we do not find evidence for redistributional measures of pension systems (e.g. care benefits) leading to higher pension incomes of women compared to men within the same life course clusters and thus to a significant reduction of the Gender Pension Gap. We contribute to the literatures on gender inequality, life-course processes, and comparative analysis of old age pensions by showing how combined work and family life-courses lead to different gender pension gaps in two countries.

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“…Many women seek work-related accommodations or leave the labor force entirely to care for family members who need assistance due to old age or disability (Lahaie, Earle, and Heymann 2013; Van Houtven, Coe, and Skira 2013) and are treated as less committed or competent if they seek flexible work accommodations to care for children or older adults (O’Connor and Cech 2018). Caregiving responsibilities may explain why working women experience grim prospects for their career (Wynn 2017), more depression (Leupp 2020), and negative impacts on their health (Uccheddu et al 2022). Such unequal outcomes of caregiving among middle-aged adults are illustrative of gender as context (Moen 2001), where gender determines the impacts of social roles or important life events and “sets the context” (Moen 1996:177) for differential life trajectories, opportunities, and risks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caregiving, Gender, and Health: The Moderating Role of Age

Kim

2023

Sociological Perspectives

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Unpaid caregiving by family or friends has increased over the recent years, with a simultaneous decline in the health of caregivers. Yet, limited research has examined the interrelationships between caregiving status, gender, age and health, or how dimensions of caregiving (type of care, relationship with care recipient) complicate these relationships. Using data from 428,395 U.S. adults from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), I find that young adult men and women providing personal care report poorer self-rated health than noncaregivers. Regarding the relationship with care recipient, young adults caring for a spouse/partner report the poorest self-rated health, and particularly women. Overall, caregiving tends to be more adversely associated with health among young adults when the type of care provided is personal or when they have an ill spouse/partner to care for, both of which can be construed as off-timed from the life course perspective.

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Gendered work-family life courses and late-life physical functioning: A comparative analysis from 28 European countries

Cited by 7 publications

References 143 publications

Work-family trajectories across Europe: differences between social groups and welfare regimes

Work-family trajectories across Europe: differences between social groups and welfare regimes

Life-course-sensitive analysis of group inequalities: Combining Sequence Analysis with the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

Caregiving, Gender, and Health: The Moderating Role of Age

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