The de-standardization of the life course: Are men and women equal?

Widmer, Éric; Ritschard, Gilbert

doi:10.1016/j.alcr.2009.04.001

Cited by 203 publications

(174 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Although OM is by far the most frequently used metric for sequence analysis in the social sciences, the literature is still inconclusive about the best solution for specifying the costs of the three operations (Gauthier et al 2009;Hollister 2009). In this study, we opt for unitary insertion/deletion costs and empirically define substitution costs as the inverse of the transition rates, following the approach of previous studies (e.g., Aassve, Billari, and Piccarreta 2007;Kleinepier, de Valk, and van Gaalen 2015;Widmer and Ritschard 2009). As a robustness check, we replicate our analyses by using another commonly applied solution for calculating OM distances: insertion/deletion costs of 1 and a constant substitution cost of 2.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…It has been argued that these processes have increased diversity in demographic family behavior between individuals, which has been referred to as destandardization of the life course. While some studies have found support for this idea (Elzinga and Liefbroer 2007;Widmer and Ritschard 2009), there is also empirical evidence showing a fairly strong consensus concerning the timing and sequencing of important life transitions among young adults from recent birth cohorts (Elchardus and Smits 2006;Nico 2014). In other words, while the transition to adulthood has without doubt become more lengthy and complex for youth in Western societies, the extent to which these developments have actually increased diversity in family behavior between individuals remains a topic of controversy in the literature.…”

Section: Destandardization Of the Life Coursementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To achieve this, we calculate the heterogeneity of the state distribution at each chronological age for the different origin groups. We use Shannon entropy (Shannon 1948) as a heterogeneity indicator, which has also been used in previous studies (Billari 2001b;Widmer and Ritschard 2009). The Shannon entropy-index is a number between [0, 1], where a higher value indicates more diversity of states among individuals.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The life courses of young adults in Western Europe and the United States have changed considerably in the 20 th century (Brückner and Mayer 2005;McLanahan 2004;Widmer and Ritschard 2009). Pathways into and through adulthood among cohorts born in the first half of the past century were characterized by increasing uniformity.…”

Section: Destandardization Of the Life Coursementioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Ethnic differences in family trajectories of young adult women in the Netherlands: Timing and sequencing of events

Kleinepier¹,

Valk²

2016

DemRes

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Destandardization Of the Life Coursementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Destandardization Of the Life Coursementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Ethnic differences in family trajectories of young adult women in the Netherlands: Timing and sequencing of events

Kleinepier¹,

Valk²

2016

DemRes

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“…There is no optimal solution for assigning the cost of these operations and the literature is inconclusive about the best approach (see Abbott & Tsay 2000, Wu 2000 for discussion). We follow the commonly applied solution of using unitary insertion/deletion costs and substitution costs based on transition rates in order to get data-driven costs and thus avoiding subjectivity (Aassve et al 2007, Widmer & Ritschard 2009). …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Paths of Migrants: A Sequence Analysis of Polish Migrants’ Family Life Trajectories

2015

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INTRODUCTIONThe family-life dynamics of international migrants have become a core topic in demographic studies over the past decades (Kulu & Gonzalez-Ferrer 2014). These studies have focused on different aspects of family-life behavior. For instance, previous research shows that international migration and partner selection are frequently interrelated (Milewski 2003), that moving over long distances influences the stability of a union (Frank & Wildsmith 2005, Boyle et al. 2008, and that migration may alter fertility behavior (Milewski 2007, Lindstrom & Giorguli Saucedo 2002. Many of these studies have focused on the impact of migration on a specific event in the life course. By focusing on events, however, one may miss a deeper insight into the life course, which is unfortunate as life-course theory emphasizes that different events in the life course are not separate experiences, but are linked to one another (Giele & Elder 1998).The main research objective of this paper is to go beyond this event-oriented approach and to provide a more integral picture of the link between migration and family behavior. We develop an empirically grounded typology of partnership, fertility, and migration behavior by applying sequence analysis. This technique can be seen as complementing to the often applied techniques of event history analysis: whereas event history analysis concentrates primarily on causal effects for transitions from one state to another, sequence analysis is an approach aimed at exploring and describing actual life-course trajectories and has more descriptive value (Aisenbrey & Fasang 2010, Billari 2001. Although sequence analysis has increasingly been used in life course research over the past decade (e.g., Aassve et al. 2007, Billari et al. 2006, Bras et al. 2010, Elzinga & Liefbroer 2007, the technique has been relatively little applied in the migration literature. The application of sequence analysis also in the field of migration studies is however a fruitful approach, as it offers a digestible overview of the complex interrelationship between migration and family dynamics. Poland is part of the European Union (EU) since 2004 and Polish migrants are thus free to settle in other EU member states (with some initial barriers on the labor market after EU entry). In this regard, Polish migrants differ strongly from migrants from outside the EU for whom it is much more difficult to travel back and forth between the Netherlands and their country of origin due to compulsory visa requirements (Dagevos 2011). A crucial question of the relatively new intra-European migration flows is therefore whether these migrants will stay temporarily or whether they will settle permanently. Besides economic reasons for returning to the country of origin, the family context also plays a crucial role in the return decisions of immigrants (Dustmann 2003). We will pay specific attention to this and study the permanence of settlement in relation to family trajectories. The trajectory-based approach 5 applied in this study is particul...

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Analysis of Life History Calendar Data

Eerola

Helske

2018

Wiley StatsRef: Statistics Reference Online

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The life history calendar (LHC) is a data‐collection tool for obtaining reliable retrospective data on several life domains. LHC data can be analyzed either with probabilistic modeling of transitions between the life states or with sequence analysis, a data‐mining method that requires minimal simplification of the original data. The life events define the multistate model and its event‐specific hazards and the parallel life domains in multidimensional sequence analysis. These two approaches complement each other, and recently also several ways to combine them have been suggested.

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The de-standardization of the life course: Are men and women equal?

Cited by 203 publications

References 18 publications

Ethnic differences in family trajectories of young adult women in the Netherlands: Timing and sequencing of events

Ethnic differences in family trajectories of young adult women in the Netherlands: Timing and sequencing of events

Life Paths of Migrants: A Sequence Analysis of Polish Migrants’ Family Life Trajectories

Analysis of Life History Calendar Data

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