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This study investigated the effects of family socioeconomic status on children’s academic performance as mediated by their home environment and children’s characteristics, with special attention to gender differences. Structural modeling was applied to a nationally representative Czech Household Panel Survey data (2015/2016). The results revealed that socioeconomic status had no significant direct effects on school performance after controlling for other family aspects. The effects of parental education and income were transmitted by parents’ aspirations for their children, positive parenting, and literacy environment. Home environment, in turn, affected children’s aspirations, general well-being, and interest in books, which directly enhanced children’s school grades. Indeed, children’s characteristics were found to be the strongest predictors of their school performance. The gender analyses showed that the effects of parental characteristics were directly related to boys’ achievement; however, for girls, the effects of parental characteristics operated indirectly through girls’ aspirations, well-being, and interest in books. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of occupational resources (field of occupation, socio-economic status, and income) in the odds of having a highly educated partner, having a partner with lower education, and staying single. The analysis of the EUSILC 2013 data demonstrate that women with better jobs and higher incomes have higher odds of living in a homogamous union with a highly educated partner. The data also show that if high resource women do not live with highly educated men, they are less likely to marry down compared to women with fewer resources and are more likely to stay single. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that women working in female-dominated professions are more likely to marry down and that the effect of the field cannot be explained by fewer personal resources. We also tested the idea that the link between individual resources and living arrangements is moderated by the female employment rate. We demonstrate that women are more likely to partner down in countries with higher female labor force participation. However, this tendency does not hold for high-income women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores cross-national differences in the link between marital status, smoking and binge drinking. Using the International Social Survey Data (ISSP Health and Health Care) from 2011, it tests whether the gap between married and single individuals depends on the prevalence of the vice in the society. This hypothesis was partly corroborated for binge drinking in both male and female samples though the link between marriage and alcohol consumption is reversed in the high prevalence context. In case of smoking, the idea of the decreasing role of marriage in countries where tobacco use is widespread was confirmed only among men. The analysis also showed that cohabitation was not as strongly linked to health practices as marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]