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Many studies have reported evidence of negative associations between fixed-term contract employment and fertility. With few exceptions, these studies assume that employment status is exogenous and thus results are likely biased. Furthermore, previous research has mostly not considered whether the effects of employment status on fertility might vary with other worker characteristics. We draw on nineteen years of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to investigate the causal effect of contingent forms of employment (including both fixed-term and casual employment) on first births, and how that effect varies with selected worker characteristics. The issue of endogeneity is addressed through the use of instrumental variables estimation. Our main finding is that both fixed-term contracts and casual employment lead to a significantly lower probability of first births among men, with the effect of fixed-term contracts being almost as twice as large as the effect of casual employment. We also find that these negative fertility effects vary with workers’ education, occupational status, country of origin, age, and relationship status. In the case of women, one of the instruments fails to satisfy the exclusion restriction, suggesting endogeneity remains a concern when analyzing female fertility outcomes.

This article discusses major challenges facing intergenerational mobility research in three main domains: (i) the (dis)connection between theory and empirical applications; (ii) data gaps; (iii) measurement concerns. In doing so, it highlights theoretical and empirical extensions to better describe, explain, and predict complex intergenerational transmission processes in the light of new and rapid administrative data linkages, more mature survey data and other forms of big data. The article concludes with future directions for research.

Lockdown edicts during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to concerns about consequences for childbirth plans and decisions. Robust empirical research to either refute or confirm these concerns, however, is lacking. To evaluate the causal impact of lockdowns on fertility, we exploited a large sample of Australians (aged 18-45) from a nationally representative household panel survey and leveraged variation from a unique natural experiment that occurred in Australia in 2020: a lockdown imposed in the state of Victoria, but not elsewhere in Australia. Difference-in-differences models were estimated comparing changes in fertility intentions of persons who resided in Victoria during lockdown, or within four weeks of the lockdown being lifted, and those living elsewhere in Australia. Results revealed a significantly larger decline in reported intentions of having another child among women who lived through the protracted lockdown. The average effect was small, with fertility intentions estimated to fall by between 2.8% and 4.3% of the pre-pandemic mean. This negative effect was, however, more pronounced among those aged over 35 years, the less educated, and those employed on fixed-term contracts. Impacts on men's fertility intentions were generally negligible, but with a notable exception being Indigenous Australians.

Does parental joblessness delay young adults’ school-to-work transitions? If so, can a university degree moderate this relationship? We examine these questions using a representative sample of young adults who lived with their parents prior to entering the labor market in Australia (N = 2152) and the U.S. (N = 811) during the period 2001–2015. Results from Cox proportional hazards models demonstrate that parental joblessness (the proportion of time spent living in a household where no parent was employed) is associated with slower school-to-work transitions in both the U.S. and Australia. University degree attainment mitigates much of this negative relationship in Australia, suggesting that parental joblessness is most harmful for Australians who leave school before earning a university degree. There is no evidence for a similar interaction in the U.S., suggesting that the relationship between education, parental joblessness, and the school-to-work transition may depend on contextual factors such as the welfare regime.

This study examines the effect of parents’ unemployment on their children’s subsequent educational attainment. Its theoretical significance lies on its focus to test the mediating role of parents’ changing work ethics during spells of unemployment. Integrating multiple survey and administrative data sources, our estimates are based on a sample of Dutch children (n = 812) who were exposed to their parents’ unemployment during the previous economic crisis in the early 1980s. Our results reveal a direct negative effect between fathers’ unemployment duration and their children’s educational attainment and also an indirect effect through mothers’ changing attitudes towards work. We also find empirical evidence that mothers’ and fathers’ whose views about work become more pessimistic lead to reduced educational attainment among their children.

Studies of intergenerational stratification and mobility have long called for investigation of the joint role of mothers and fathers in affecting labor market outcomes of children. However, long-term effects of parental joblessness—where no co-residing parent is employed at a given time—are not well understood. Using longitudinal data (covering 9942 person-year observations from 2281 children) from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, this study investigates the long-term association between parental joblessness and children's wages during early adulthood. It examines whether these associations are mediated by family income during childhood and adolescence, educational attainment, and subsequent employment inactivity of the child, and whether exposure at earlier ages is associated with more detrimental effects. Multilevel mixed-effects models regressing hourly wages in early adulthood (observed over 2008–2018) on the proportion of time spent living in a household where no parent is employed (observed over 2001–2007) reveal two major findings. First, exposure to parental joblessness during childhood and adolescence is correlated with adverse wage outcomes during early adulthood in addition to previously documented employment penalties, with similar estimates across age groups. Second, mediation analyses indicate that household income, children's educational attainment, and children's own inactivity reduce the magnitude of this wage penalty, but do not completely offset it.

Temporary and other forms of non-standard employment are an important feature of modern labour markets. Yet, relatively little is known about how much and under what circumstances such employment arrangements impact on long-term wage outcomes. Using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey spanning the period 2001 to 2014, we examine how employment status earlier in a working career is associated with subsequent wage dynamics. Particular attention is paid to how wage trajectories vary with gender and age. Estimates from a series of panel data models of real hourly wages reveal that among men there is an average long-run penalty from casual employment of about 10%, suggestive of scarring effects. Nevertheless, for men in most age groups this wage penalty does eventually begin to shrink. Among prime-age men, however, there is no evidence of catch-up; indeed, for this group the wage gap widens over time. Among women the estimated average long-run wage penalty associated with casual employment is both much smaller and less robust. We argue that expectations and norms about ‘ideal careers’ may be an important explanatory factor underlying the larger casual employment wage penalty for men.

Unemployment is an important predictor of one’s future employment success. Yet, much about the endurance of unemployment effects on workers’ careers remains poorly understood. Our study complements this knowledge gap by examining the rate of recovery in the quality of careers following an unemployment spell among a representative sample of previously unemployed workers with different socio-demographic characteristics in Germany. We apply a new dynamic measure that quantifies the quality of binary sequences, distinguishing between “good” (i.e., employment) from “bad” labor force status activities (i.e., unemployment and inactivity). We use longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) before the Great Financial Recession over the period 1984–2005 and deploy a series of hybrid models that control for unobserved heterogeneity. We find a non-linear recovery process after unemployment across gender and age groups. That is, after a period of recovery, career quality worsens. Least impacted are men experiencing unemployment when aged between 25–34 years, while men 55–66 have rather stable, though stronger, penalties. Furthermore, we find that recovery processes are contingent upon when respondents experience unemployment.

Despite the relevance of parents’ economic participation for children’s future outcomes, few studies have considered the joint contribution of both parents’ joblessness in explaining children’s employment outcomes in the long run. Further, previous studies have used measures of parents’ employment status observed at a single point in time. In contrast, in this study, exposure to dual-parent joblessness is measured in a cumulative fashion using longitudinal data for Australia (from the HILDA Survey, N = 895) and the United States (from the PSID, N = 1,500). We find that, in both countries, dual-parent-child associations are multiple times greater when parents jointly experience joblessness than when either of the parents is jobless. In the United States, family resources fully account for the link between parents’ and their children’s joblessness, whereas this is not the case in Australia. Overall, our study shows that dual-parent joblessness is an independent dimension of stratification that plays a prominent role in the reproduction of social and economic status across generations.

We propose a new measure to quantify the quality of binary sequences that can be meaningfully interpreted as series of successes and failures. We operationalize the concept of positive and negative sequences by formulating general properties that a quality measure must adhere to, construct a measure that fulfills these requirements, and show that such measure can be modeled in a theoretically meaningful way. We apply such measure of sequence quality to data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey over the period 2001 to 2013, and model the evolution of employment career quality after the occurrence of an initial spell of unemployment, providing a direct test of unemployment “scarring” theories. We define states of unemployment and inactivity as failures and those of employment as successes to predict whether prior unemployment leads to descending spirals into inactivity and joblessness or whether patterns of full career recovery exist. Our findings lend support to scarring theories by demonstrating that, despite recovery trends, career disparities among previously unemployed workers persist long after their first unemployment experience. We conclude discussing implications of the findings and proposing directions for future extensions of the measure.

Does parental joblessness delay young adults’ school-to-work transitions? If so, can a university degree moderate this relationship? We examine these questions using a representative sample of young adults under the age of 25 that lived with their parents prior to entering the labor market in Australia (N=2,151) and the U.S. (N=811) during the period 2001-2015. Results from Cox proportional hazards models, adjusting for clustering of siblings, demonstrate that parental joblessness is associated with slower school-to-work transitions in both the U.S. and Australia. University degree attainment mitigates much of this negative relationship in Australia, suggesting that parental joblessness is most harmful for Australians who leave school before earning a university degree. There is no evidence for a similar interaction in the U.S., suggesting that the relationship between education, parental joblessness, and the school-to-work transition may depend on contextual factors such as the welfare regime.

Using longitudinal data from the Dutch Labor Force Supply Panel (OSA), this article examines how unemployment scarring (i.e., wage setbacks following unemployment) and its underlying mechanisms operate across gender in the Netherlands over the period 1985-2000. A series of fixed effect panel models that correct for unobserved heterogeneity, reveal a notable disparity in unemployment scarring by gender. Interestingly, while unemployment scarring is short-lived and partly conditional upon human capital differences among women, it is strongly persistent among men and contingent upon old age, ethnicity, and tight economic conditions. Our findings provide new evidence regarding unemployment scarring by gender while they support the hypothesis that among women the effects of unemployment scarring are predominantly driven by human capital depreciation, while among men stigma effects dominate.

We first provide comprehensive and advanced access to principal component analysis, factor analysis, and reliability analysis. Based on a discussion of the different types of factor analytic procedures (exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling), we introduce the steps involved in a principal component analysis and a reliability analysis, offering guidelines for executing them in Stata. Specifically, we cover the requirements for running an analysis, modern options for extracting the factors and deciding on their number, as well as for interpreting and judging the quality of the results. Based on a step-by-step description of Stata’s menu options and code, we present an in-depth discussion of each element of the Stata output. Interpretation of output can be difficult, which we make much easier by means of various illustrations and applications, using a detailed case study to quickly make sense of the results. We conclude with suggestions for further readings on the use, application, and interpretation of factor analytic procedures.

Using a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of prime-age Dutch workers over the period 1980–2000, we examine how a previously held job with a fixed-term contract influences both the likelihood and the duration of a future spell of unemployment. Analyses show that Dutch workers with fixed-term contracts experience higher risks of future unemployment and have no shorter spells of unemployment compared to workers with regular contracts. Results also reveal that swifter employment re-entries among men with fixed-term contracts can be explained by their job search efforts before unemployment. Our study (partly) invalidates theoretical positions that claim that fixed-term contracts foster employment security by shortening unemployment durations; suggesting that fixed-term contracts are a short-term blessing that could end, for some workers, in a recurrent unemployment trap.

The paper examines changes in the influence of family background, including socioeconomic and social background variables on educational attainment in Australia for cohorts born between 1890 and 1982. We test hypotheses from modernization theory on sibling data using random effects models and find: (i) substantial declines in the influence of family background on educational attainment (indicated by the sibling intraclass correlations); (ii) declines in the effects of both economic and cultural socioeconomic background variables; (iii) changes in the effects of some social background variables (e.g., family size); (iv) and declines in the extent that socioeconomic and social background factors account for variation in educational attainment. Unmeasured family background factors are more important, and proportionally increasingly so, for educational attainment than the measured socioeconomic and social background factors analyzed. Fixed effects models showed steeper declines in the effects of socioeconomic background variables than in standard analyses suggesting that unmeasured family factors associated with socioeconomic background obscure the full extent of the decline.

This study includes retrenchments in unemployment insurance (UI) benefits as an understudied mechanism to investigate possible explanations for wage inequality in the labor market. Using longitudinal data from the Dutch Labor Supply Panel (OSA) over the period 1985-2000, and adopting a quasi-experimental design, we not only extend current research by asking if restrictive changes in UI benefits affect re-employment wages, but also explore variation by the level, and eligibility conditions of UI benefits across gender and over time. Results from a series of fixed-effects models show that lower and shorter UI benefits lead to persisting wage inequalities over time. When investigating whether wage penalties vary across gender, we find that women experience the largest penalties. These findings provide evidence that these particular types of restrictions in UI benefits have likely increased rather than decreased wage inequalities between men and women. © 2011 The Author 2011.

We aim to examine how previous unemployment affects future unemployment and career complexity over the life course. Theory suggests that unemployment triggers negative chains of ‘low-pay-no-pay’ circles. Using longitudinal data on men aged 18–64 from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we employ sequence-based methods to quantify career complexity and dynamic panel models to test our hypotheses about the process of cumulative disadvantage on employment careers for the previously unemployed workers over time. We find that unemployment ‘breeds’ unemployment and increases career complexity over the life course. However, unemployment at older ages leads to much higher career complexity than at younger ages.

We compare how gender inequality varies by educational level in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States, representing three different welfare regimes: the conservative, the social democratic, and the liberal. With few exceptions, gender inequality in labor force participation, work hours, occupational segregation, and housework are less severe as education goes up in all three countries, with the root cause being the high employment levels of well-educated women. Despite a common pattern across nations, we note that the educational gradient on gender equality in employment is weaker in Sweden. De-familialization policies in Sweden no doubt increase gender equality at the bottom by pulling less-educated women into the work force. One form of gender equality, wages, however, does not increase with education. In the United States, educational differences in the gender gap in wages are trivial; in Sweden and the Netherlands, the gender wage gap is greatest for the highly educated because of higher returns to education for men than women in these nations.

Purpose: In many countries, sex offenders are treated as a special group of offenders, requiring special criminal justice responses and treatment modalities, presuming they are at high risk of re-offending. These special measures limit them in entering adult roles, especially employment. At the same time, such adult roles have been found to reduce offending risk in general offenders. We aim to investigate whether employment reduces offending rates in juvenile sex offenders' (JSO).Method: Using longitudinal data on a Dutch sample of 498 JSO, we investigate employment and offending careers in JSO. A hybrid random effects model is used to investigate within-individual changes of employment quality and employment stability on offending. We also investigated whether the effects differ for child abusers, peer abusers and group offenders, who have different background profiles and for whom employment effects could be less.Results: We first show that JSO enter the labor market at relatively young ages, with stagnating participation rates from age 25 on, and numerous and short-lived employment contracts. In spite of these fractured careers, employment is associated with a decrease in offending. We found no difference for offender types in the effect of employment on offending.Conclusions: We conclude that for JSO, employment decreases offending. Policies aimed at guidance towards employment, or the inclusion into conventional society, may be effective for JSO.

This study examines whether a series of unemployment insurance benefit reforms that took place over a 20-year period in the Netherlands had a gendered effect on the duration of unemployment and labor market outcomes. Using longitudinal data from the Dutch Labor Supply Panel (OSA) over the period 1980-2000, and adopting a quasi-experimental design, we test whether seemingly 'gender neutral' institutional reforms result in a structural disadvantage for women in particular. Our results demonstrate a striking gender similarity in terms of shorter unemployment durations and ultimately less favorable labor market outcomes (lower occupational class, lower wage, part-time and temporary contracts) among both men and women affected by these reforms. Findings also indicate that disadvantaged groups (older and low-skilled female workers) are the most likely to experience a negative effect from state interventions. These findings provide support for the long-term gains of unemployment benefits and their role in operating as "bridges" to better employment. © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All rights reserved.