This study offers a descriptive overview of changes in fertility plans during the COVID-19 crisis in a sample of the young population (18-34) in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. ...The data were collected between 27 March and 7 April 2020. Our results show that fertility plans have been negatively revised in all countries, but not in the same way. In Germany and France fertility plans changed moderately, with many people still planning or postponing their decision to have a child. In Italy, however, the proportion of abandoners is much higher than in the other countries, and the proportion of those deciding to postpone their plans is lower. Moreover, across countries the demographic characteristics of individuals appear to be associated with fertility plans in different ways. In Italy, abandoners are common among individuals younger than 30 and those without a tertiary education. In Germany, abandoners are slightly more prevalent in the regions most affected by COVID-19. In the United Kingdom, the individuals that most frequently abandoned their fertility plans are those who expect the crisis to have a dramatic negative effect on their future income. Finally, in France and Spain we do not observe a clear pattern of revision of fertility plans.
This study investigates the association between objective and subjective indicators of economic uncertainty, generated by the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and young Italians' fertility plans ...during the 2020. We use unique repeated cross-sectional data, collected at different time points during the pandemic (March and October/November 2020) together with pre-COVID data (2016). The data offer a standard fertility intention question pre- and during-COVID, and also a direct question on whether pre-COVID fertility plans have been confirmed, postponed or abandoned. In March 2020, individuals with more vulnerable occupations show a lower probability of intending to have a(nother) child in the short-term and a higher probability of abandoning their pre-COVID fertility plan; in October 2020 changes in fertility plans do not vary by employment condition. Instead, both in March and October, those who suffered from a negative income shock and those with negative expectations on their future income and occupation are more likely to abandon their pre-pandemic fertility plan compared to their better off counterparts. Overall, economic uncertainty seems to have similarly affected men and women's fertility intentions. Our findings point to the fact that the unequal economic consequences of the pandemic also produced and will produce heterogeneous effects on fertility intentions.
This study investigates the association between objective and subjective indicators of economic uncertainty, generated by the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, and young Italians' fertility plans ...during the 2020. We use unique repeated cross-sectional data, collected at different time points during the pandemic (March and October/November 2020) together with pre-COVID data (2016). The data offer a standard fertility intention question pre- and during-COVID, and also a direct question on whether pre-COVID fertility plans have been confirmed, postponed or abandoned. In March 2020, individuals with more vulnerable occupations show a lower probability of intending to have a(nother) child in the short-term and a higher probability of abandoning their pre-COVID fertility plan; in October 2020 changes in fertility plans do not vary by employment condition. Instead, both in March and October, those who suffered from a negative income shock and those with negative expectations on their future income and occupation are more likely to abandon their pre-pandemic fertility plan compared to their better off counterparts. Overall, economic uncertainty seems to have similarly affected men and women's fertility intentions. Our findings point to the fact that the unequal economic consequences of the pandemic also produced and will produce heterogeneous effects on fertility intentions.
Difficulties with work--family reconciliation contribute to explaining the low participation of women in the labour market and low fertility levels in several developed countries. Understanding how ...much different types of childcare can help mothers to balance family and work is crucial for implementing ad hoc policies. This study examines whether working mothers' satisfaction with work--family balance is associated with different combinations of paid and unpaid childcare arrangements. Difficulties in using different types of childcare are also considered. We use random effects models on panel data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (2003-2013). CONTRIBUTION
With the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Europe during the first months of 2020, most of the governments imposed restrictive measures to people mobility and physical distance (the lockdown), ...which severely impacted on the economic activities and performance of many countries. Thus, the health emergency turned rapidly into in an economic crisis. The COVID-19 crisis in Europe increased the uncertainty about the economic recovery and the end of health emergency. This situation is supposed to have conditioned individuals’ life course path with the effect of inducing people to postpone or to abandon many life plans.
This paper aims to explore and describe whether the rise of health emergency due to the COVID-19 has delayed or vanished young people’s intention to leave the parental home, in order to establish their own household, during 2020 in five European countries: Italy, Germany, France, Spain and the UK. Using data from an international survey from the “Youth Project”, carried out by the Toniolo Institute of Advanced Studies, this paper implements generalized logistic models for ordinal dependent variables to investigate the factors associated with a possible revision of the choice of leaving the parental home for a representative sample of 6000 respondents aged 18 to 34, interviewed between March and April 2020. In particular, we compare the effect of the occupational condition and the perceived income and employment vulnerability on the chance of confirmation, postponement or abandonment of the pre-pandemic plan across the five selected European countries.
Results show that Italy, Spain and the UK are the countries with the highest probability of a downward revision of the intentions of leaving the nest. Especially in these countries, having negative expectations about changes in the individual’s and family’s future income is associated with the choice of abandoning the purpose of leaving the parental home. However, the vulnerability of the category of temporary workers particularly arises in Southern European countries: young people with precarious jobs seem to be the most prone to negatively revise their intentions of leaving, even compared with those not working.
Recent studies have suggested a decline in subjective well-being after the birth of a first child. Yet parents' subjective well-being is, in general, linked positively to wanting and to having ...additional children. The paper addresses the question of whether new parents' satisfaction with their overall life and several specific life spheres modifies their expectations about having a second, or further, child. Relying on twelve waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia panel survey (2001-2012), we apply piecewise growth models to a sample of individuals in couples who experience parenthood for the first time. We model, separately by gender, the relationship between satisfaction in seventeen life domains, overall life satisfaction, and fertility expectations during the first three years following the birth of a first child. CONTRIBUTION
In this paper, we provide an innovative conceptualization of the work-family balance, and its implications for mothers' and fathers' life satisfaction, by drawing on 'Self Determination Theory' and ...'Job Demand-Control-Support' model for the 'basic psychological needs' in partnership, parenting, and work. We analyse whether work and family satisfaction have different meanings for mothers and fathers, and whether it has equal importance in determining overall life satisfaction by gender. Using a sample of dual-earner parents from the third (2010/11) to the eleventh (2018/19) waves of the German Family Panel (pairfam) panel survey. Our results support the idea that selfrealization in partnership, parenting, and work are important for both men and for women. However, there is gender difference in the way that work and family satisfaction is conceived and also in the way that the combined satisfaction in these two life spheres affects overall life satisfaction.
This study accounts for the heterogeneous consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on fertility plans and behaviours, by focusing on the motivations for suspended pre-Covid fertility plans and on those ...for new fertility plans that arose during the pandemic. We rely on unique data collected with a repeated cross-sectional survey conducted in April/May 2021 and October/November 2021 on a sample of young Italians (aged 18-34). We estimate a set of multinomial and logit models to examine some correlates of fertility plans and behaviours. Then, we provide a more qualitative analysis of the reasons behind the resulting patterns of associations. Changes in fertility plans and behaviours from pre-COVID intentions clearly show that the economic recession burdens unequally individuals and their opportunities to cope with obstacles to both work and family involvement. At the same time, those who started to plan childbirth during the pandemic, frequently cite as important motivations the increased opportunities to enjoy the family life, the more balanced work and family involvement, the higher share of domestic tasks in the couple, and the improved relationship quality. Our results suggest the need for exploring also positive channels through which the Covid-19 crisis had provided opportunities for planning new births.
The vast majority of studies looking into the relationship between childbearing and subjective well-being use overall measures where respondents either report their general level of happiness or ...their life satisfaction, leaving substantial doubt about the underlying mechanisms. However, life satisfaction and happiness are intuitively multidimensional concepts, simply because there cannot be only one aspect that affects individuals' well-being. In this study, by considering seventeen specific life satisfaction domains, these features come out very clearly. Whereas all the domains considered matter for the overall life satisfaction, only three of them, namely satisfaction with leisure, health and satisfaction with the partnership, change dramatically surrounding childbearing events. Even though we cannot generalise (since these results stem from one particular panel survey, i.e., Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia data), it appears that the typical anticipation and post-child decrease of life satisfaction, so often found in existing studies, stems from changes in these three domains.
This paper introduces the mini-symposium on Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and set-theoretic methods, both crisp sets and fuzzy sets, and situates the different contributions in a wider ...methodological debate concerning cross-case analysis. The paper argues that QCA is not just a set of techniques, but a distinctive research approach, with its own goals and set of assumptions. Concerning the wide methodological debate, special attention is paid to the added value of QCA and specific innovations introduced in the mini-symposium. This essay contrasts the conventional template for conducting social inquiry and the alternate template provided by configurational, case-oriented analytic methods, first formalized in The Comparative Method. The essential contrasts address the fundamental building blocks of social research, ranging from the definition of relevant cases to the understanding of social causation. The alternate template described in this essay provides a much stronger basis for the articulation of within-case and cross-case analysis than is offered by the conventional template. This article provides a first systematic mapping of QCA applications, building upon a database of 313 peer-reviewed journal articles. We find out that the number of QCA applications has dramatically increased during the past few years. The mapping also reveals that csQCA remains the most frequently used technique, that political science, sociology, and management are the core disciplines of application, that macrolevel analyses, medium-N designs, and a mono-method use of QCA remain predominant. A particular focus is also laid on the ratio between the number of cases and number of conditions and the compliance to benchmarks in this respect. QCA's ability of addressing complex theoretical expectations and taking account of configurational relationships is rarely fully exploited. Assessing comparative welfare-state research, which has employed QCA, we find that only about half of the studies reviewed have expressed complex theoretical propositions in set-theoretical terms, revisited cases subsequent to the formal analysis, or subjected findings to robustness checks. We discuss the relevance of each of these three aspects and argue that carefully considering these will improve the quality of QCA applications. Contrasting insights that can be gained from large-N QCA and econometric analysis, we outline two novel ways to integrate both modes of inquiry. The first introduces QCA solutions into a regression model, while the second draws on recent work in lattice theory to integrate a QCA approach with a regression framework. These approaches allow researchers to test QCA solutions for robustness, address concerns regarding possible omitted variables, establish effect sizes, and test whether causal conditions are complements or substitutes, suggesting that an important way forward for set-theoretic analysis lies in an increased dialogue that explores complementarities with existing econometric approaches. This paper discusses five strategies to deal with five types of errors in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): condition errors, systematic errors, random errors, calibration errors, and deviant case errors. These strategies are the comparative inspection of complex, intermediary, and parsimonious solutions; the use of an adjustment factor, the use of probabilistic criteria, the test of the robustness of calibration parameters, and the use of a frequency threshold for observed combinations of conditions. The strategies are systematically reviewed, assessed, and evaluated as regards their applicability, advantages, limitations, and complementarities. Current standard practices put sufficiency at the core of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), while the analysis of necessity is limited to the test for necessary conditions. Here, we argue that the possibilities of QCA in the latter domain are much greater. In particular, it can be used to empirically confront theories centered on necessary relations and that involved various conditions. A new operation, labeled the "systematic necessity assessment," is therefore introduced. To show its added value, a published QCA study that confronts theories centered on necessary relations but using the regular minimization is replicated. Limited diversity is among the most understudied methodological challenges. QCA allows for a more conscious treatment of logical remainders than most other comparative methods. The current state of the art is the Standard Analysis (Ragin 2008; Ragin and Sonnett 2004). We discuss two of its pitfalls, both rooted in the primacy given to parsimony. First, the Standard Analysis is no safeguard against untenable assumptions. As a remedy, we propose the Enhanced Standard Analysis (ESA). Second, researchers should consider including theoretically sound counterfactual claims even if they do not contribute to parsimony. We label this Theory-Guided Enhanced Standard Analysis (TESA). This paper aims at strengthening causal inference in necessary condition research. We demonstrate how process tracing based on purposefully selected cases can complement findings on cross-case patterns identified with Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Using an empirical example, we discuss the meaning of typical and deviant cases in analyses of necessity, develop formulas for identifying the most typical and most deviant cases, and detail the implications of so-called SUIN conditions for meaningful case selection. In addition, we clarify various viable variants of comparative process tracing and formulas for identifying the best-matching pairs of cases. Adapted from the source document.
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