Abstract This study investigated the longitudinal relationship between learning disabilities (LD) in adolescence and educational attainment, as well as the underlying mechanisms behind this relationship. Using a sibling sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 1,710), this study employed sibling fixed effects models to account for unobserved family-level characteristics such as genes and early childhood family and social context. Sobel mediation analyses were performed on a gender-stratified sample to investigate the following mechanisms: educational aspirations and expectations, educational effort, and school-based relationships. Sibling fixed effects estimates revealed that LD in adolescence was negatively associated with years of schooling completed in adulthood (b = −0.494, P < 0.01). Gender-stratified models showed that only the association for girls was statistically significant (b = −0.689, P < 0.05). Among girls, this association was partially explained by a combination of educational aspirations and expectations, educational effort, and school-based relationships, with educational aspirations and expectations being the most salient mechanism. These findings highlight that LD is not only an individual cognitive designation but also a socially mediated experience with long-term educational consequences, especially for girls. Policymakers and practitioners may consider developing and implementing interventions that address both educational and social challenges faced by girls with LD.
Abstract The rapid expansion of platform-mediated gig work has intensified debates over whether gig workers should receive social and employment rights comparable to those of standard employees. Yet, despite its high political salience, we know little about how citizens evaluate gig workers’ entitlement to such protections. Gig work, especially in ride hailing and food delivery, is often precarious, with a lack of control at work, weaker contribution records, and overrepresentation of migrant workers—aspects that previous research has identified as central to welfare deservingness judgments. This makes deservingness a particularly relevant lens for analysing public support for gig workers’ rights. With a pre-registered factorial vignette experiment in a six-country survey (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), we examine the general population’s willingness to pay for ride-hailing gig workers’ improved rights. We find that support for improved rights closely follows core deservingness dimensions: workers perceived as in need, showing effort on the job and lacking control receive higher support, whereas migrant status and low reciprocity reduce it. Yet, deservingness cues explain only part of the variation. Exploratory analyses show that frequent use of gig services and personal ties with gig workers associate with a higher willingness to pay, showing the relevance of intergroup contact.
Abstract This study adopts a couple-level approach to assess whether higher-income women (men) experience lower (higher) fertility due to opportunity costs and conventional gender norms or whether income pooling within couples facilitates parenthood. We test the well-established gendered relationship between income and fertility in Italy, a country historically known for its division of family roles along traditional gender lines. Utilizing longitudinal tax data (2003–2022; n = 8,039,372 person-years) from Tuscany—a region representing Italian-average levels of economic development and gender equality—we apply discrete-time event-history analyses. Results show that higher income for both men and women increases the likelihood of the first birth. Married couples in which both partners are high earners (low earners) are the most (least) likely to become parents, while hypergamous/hypogamous couples lie in between. These findings challenge traditional sex-specialization models and support the view that couples’ income pooling is a key factor for parenthood, which might compensate for weak public policies through private outsourcing. The positive income–fertility association grew slightly stronger in the late 2010s, suggesting rising economic prerequisites to union formation and parenthood. Overall, the findings highlight the economic stratification of parenthood in a context of high childlessness and rising costs of having a child.
Recent studies show how patterns and trends in social mobility look substantially different when both parents are considered rather than one. Using Swedish census and register data covering cohorts born 1865-1985 and their parents, I describe social mobility among both male-breadwinner and dual-earner family types, each reflecting a work-life context common globally today. This rich longitudinal data capture the occupational status of homemaker mothers later in life. Mobility levels in dual-earner families historically mirror mobility levels in dual-earner society today. Occupational persistence increased substantially as society transitioned from male breadwinner to dual earner; rank-rank correlations increased from 0.20 to 0.38-more so among daughters than among sons; long-term trends are however highly sensitive to specification choices - with the highest persistence specification suggesting historical levels as high as 0.47. Gender continues to play an important role throughout the period, with same-gender parent-child associations being substantially stronger than opposite-gender associations. Fathers' highest occupational attainment captures most intergenerational persistence historically, while mothers and fathers contribute similarly to intergenerational persistence in dual-earner families. Parental resources are not independent, but accumulate-and differently so over time. These findings together suggest that both parents need to be included to correctly describe long-term mobility patterns and trends, either parsimoniously with the 'pooled' approach, or through two-parent models.
How does inequality of educational opportunity evolve in the context of educational contraction? In Finland, educational attainment declined for cohorts born after the late 1970s, and this study analyses trends in class background inequality in the transition to upper secondary education using register data for total birth cohorts born between 1975 and 1997. Results from a Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) decomposition into primary (driven by educational performance) and secondary (choices net of educational performance) effects on educational inequality show different trends for females and males. Class background differences in upper secondary school choice increased steadily among females as a result of an increase in primary effects. For males, educational inequalities between the service and working classes as well as farmers decreased due to decreasing secondary effects. These results challenge traditional assumptions that changes in educational inequality operate predominantly through secondary effects and highlight the importance of examining mechanisms of educational inequality in the intersections of class background and gender.
US Americans are divided along party lines, both in politics and personal relationships. While prior research shows a preference for dating co-partisans, it remains unclear why people prefer to date co-partisans and for whom the effects are strongest. Therefore, we examine whether perceived character quality of a potential partner, perceived similarity, and expected social approval mediate the effects of matching and non-matching political party on romantic interest and whether effects vary by gender and party combinations. We conducted an online dating experiment with US American partisans and partisan leaners aged 20-33 (N = 1,097). Respondents viewed six fictional dating profiles that randomly included 'Democrat', 'Republican', or no political information. Results show that romantic interest was largely driven by preference against out-partisans, rather than for co-partisans. Out-partisan rejection was driven by perceived similarity, followed by expected social approval and perceived character quality, while co-partisan preference was driven by perceived similarity and, to a lesser extent, perceived quality. The in-group preference was strongest for Republican men and women, while out-group rejection was strongest for Democratic women. Overall, our findings show that people use politics as a proxy for non-political characteristics. They also highlight the importance of distinguishing between in-party preference and out-party animosity.
Early school-leaving is considered a societal problem, but it is unclear which family factors explain this. In this article, we focus on three family resources that may explain early school-leaving: parent's cognitive skills at age 12, parent's educational attainment, and household income. By combining the Intergenerational Transmission of Skills dataset and administrative data from the Netherlands Cohort Study on Education, we follow the educational career of almost 22,000 children. Structural equation models allow us to determine the relative importance of children's skills and family resources. Focusing on the direct effects, we find that children's cognitive skills at age 12 and initial track placement in secondary education contribute most to the risk of early school-leaving (66 per cent of the explained variance), followed by parent's household income (25 per cent) and parent's educational attainment (9 per cent). However, family resources may also indirectly explain early school-leaving by children's cognitive skills at age 12 and their initial track placement. Here, parent's cognitive skills at age 12 play the most important role. If we take that into account, we find that the total effect of parental resources increases, with parents' cognitive skills at age 12 having the strongest contribution (18 per cent), immediately followed by household income (14 per cent) and parental educational attainment (11 per cent). These results demonstrate how important family resources are for protecting against early school-leaving, both directly and indirectly.
Sweden has recorded the highest number of refugees per capita in Europe in recent decades, while its major cities maintain high levels of ethnic segregation. This paper investigates the long-term impact of refugees' initial neighborhood placement on long-term neighborhood integration. Using full population register data since 1990, the paper applies a fine-grained k-nearest-neighbor approach and accounts for refugee's potential self-selection into neighborhoods by using a Swedish refugee placement policy as exogenous treatment. Our results indicate that the higher the shares of natives, highly educated and employed in the refugees' initial neighborhood, the higher also the respective shares in their future neighborhood along these dimensions. This locational-attainment result holds robustly and is not driven by stayers. We argue that neighborhood socialization on a small geographic scale can be an important channel in explaining the path-dependent pattern of residential integration. The result encourages the use of placement policies to reduce rigid ethnic segregation patterns.
How can we encourage sustainable choices even though they yield scarce gains for the current generation? Monetary incentives and concerns for future generations are argued to have far-reaching effects on sustainable behaviours, they are at the backbone of current policy frameworks and climate change campaigns. Yet, there is a scarcity of causal evidence assessing the effectiveness of these interventions in overcoming the social dilemma at the core of sustainable choices. These theoretical arguments have been tested separately and with different samples, often using observational data and with a stronger focus on attitudinal rather than behavioural changes. Here, we jointly test these theoretical arguments and assess the impact of monetary incentives and intergenerational awareness on the emergence of sustainable behaviours in two large pre-registered between-subjects experiments (N1 = 1,167; N2 = 1,093) where participants played a discrete Common Pool Resource dilemma. Results show that being aware that there is a future generation which is affected by current decisions increases the chances to achieve sustainable development, while moderate monetary incentives alone do not accomplish such outcome. However, the combined presence of intergenerational awareness and monetary incentives is the most effective intervention to increase sustainable behaviours and achieve sustainable development.
Whereas Jews were previously the target of state persecution, official German remembrance has recast the once 'negative' other as a 'positive' other-a process through which national belonging is made conditional on holding a favourable orientation to them. Moreover, the notion of Jews as a memory-mediated other features prominently in immigrant integration discussions, especially regarding Muslims. Accordingly, this paper examines the relationship between German national belonging and individual sentiment towards Jews, moderated by migration and religious background. Using a panel survey of students, analyses indicate that, among migrant background respondents, national belonging is positively associated with pro-Jewish sentiment, the effect being uniquely pronounced for Muslims. However, among the ethnic majority, the relationship is null, despite their higher overall levels of belonging and pro-Jewish sentiment. Results underscore the relationship between immigrant conceptualizations of national belonging and state-endorsed memory culture. Further, the intensity of this association systematically varies according to social location vis-& agrave;-vis the nation: the ethnic majority situated closest to the 'core', followed by non-Muslim minorities, and then Muslims. The paper theorizes how the precarity of one's national membership informs how individuals cultivate a sense of national belonging in relation to memory-mediated others specifically, and perhaps state-endorsed cultural contents more broadly.
Limited social integration can have adverse effects on both migrants and host communities. For the case of international retirement migrants, previous evidence suggests that migrants struggle to integrate into the local community. Using a novel survey of Dutch retirement migrants based on a probability sample (DRM 2021), we describe and explain Dutch retirement migrants' social integration with locals, Dutch migrants, and non-Dutch migrants in thirty-five destination countries. Findings show that, on average, Dutch retirement migrants have the most contact with locals, followed by Dutch migrants and the least contact with non-Dutch migrants. According to our multilevel analyses, an important country-level predictor of decreased local contact was linguistic dissimilarity between origin and destination languages. Contact with locals versus migrants was also affected by the relative size of the migrant group in the destination. Significant individual-level sociocultural predictors were previous connections to the destination, which was associated with increased local contact, and stronger national identification, which was associated with having more friendships with Dutch migrants. Overall, the results reveal the effect of preferences and opportunity structures on retirement migrants' social integration.
The uneven distribution of universities across regions has been argued to create educational inequalities based on place of residence. While studies have shown positive associations between college proximity, measured by distance to nearest college or its presence, and enrolment among local residents, regional availability has often been measured insufficiently, and longitudinal evidence on the relationship is limited. Using multiple social survey datasets combined with population census data from Japan, a country that has experienced significant policy shifts regarding university locations, we examine how longitudinal changes in regional university availability in an individual's residential and neighbouring prefectures are associated with their likelihood of university enrolment and how these associations differ by parental class and education. Our results show that increased university availability in both residential and neighbouring prefectures is positively associated with enrolment. While the strength of the association does not differ significantly by parental class, individuals with tertiary-educated parents are more responsive to increased availability. These findings suggest that increased university availability in underserved areas could reduce spatial inequality in enrolment, though may have a limited role in reducing, or may even be positively associated with, inequality based on social origin.
Although parenthood and occupational sex segregation have been identified as important contributors to the gender wage gap, the interwoven effect of the two is insufficiently explored. Using data from the China Family Panel Survey (2010-2022), this article examines how parenthood and gender-typed occupations interact in shaping wages for females and males in China. Results show that, compared to those in male-dominated and integrated occupations, women in female-dominated occupations encounter trivial motherhood penalties but are poorly paid regardless of parenthood. The wage advantage provided to females in the non-female-dominated occupations vanishes once they become mothers. In contrast, fathers are relatively well-paid irrespective of occupational gender type, while non-fathers in non-male-dominated occupations experience a significant wage loss compared to those in male-dominated occupations. The gender pay gap is thus sustained by parenthood and gender-typed occupations. Our findings further provide insights into how family status reinforces workplace gender inequality despite occupation integration in China's context.
As the demand for information technology (IT) skills increases, occupational gender segregation has gained new relevance. A large body of research suggests that women are less attracted to technology-reliant occupations (things) than men are. Instead, women prefer occupations that emphasize social interactions (people). This study adds to the literature on the people versus things trade-off in occupational preferences by examining the underlying role of individuals' perceptions of IT. We argue that perceptions of IT are socially constructed, which allows for different presentations of occupational tasks and skill requirements. Surveying the occupational preferences of 2,500 eighth-grade students in Switzerland, we find that while girls prefer occupations with frequent social interactions but low reliance on IT, boys do not perceive a trade-off between working with people and working with things. Additionally, we show that boys and girls associate different features with IT and that these associations matter for their occupational preferences. Specifically, associating IT with frequent social interactions makes IT-reliant occupations more attractive for both genders, although girls are less likely than boys to associate IT with social interactions. Finally, we demonstrate that IT-reliant occupations become more attractive to girls when the presentation emphasizes the interactive and social aspects of work.
The grandchildren of immigrants have long been regarded as a litmus test for whether immigrant-origin populations successfully incorporate into the destination societies. Yet, we know very little about the 'new' third generation-that is, the grandchildren of immigrants who immigrated in the postwar era to Europe. Here, we rely on new, large-scale French data providing a unique opportunity to study the socioeconomic attainment of third-generation individuals in adulthood compared with the second generation and French natives. We jointly analyze educational and labor market attainment using five indicators at both the top and bottom of the distributions, leading to a comprehensive understanding of immigrant incorporation across generations. We report three major results. First, we find a master trend across groups and outcomes reflecting parity with natives, often already achieved at the second generation. Second, third-generation attainment is moderated by gender and national origins: we document lasting educational disadvantages for North African, third-generation males, while Southern Europeans are more likely to experience economic incorporation within the lower class. Third, mixed ancestry ceases to positively predict socioeconomic attainment by the third generation. These results have important implications for ongoing scholarly discussion of immigrant incorporation in France and beyond.
The study examines children's school performance in the years before and after parental separation, adopting a process-oriented approach. In addition, the study explores heterogeneous effects based on children's socioeconomic background and gender. Existing research on the effect of family transitions on educational outcomes typically compares outcomes before and after parental separation. However, this approach overlooks that parental separation is often preceded by a longer-term process of family decline and neglects children's ability to adapt to the new family structure. Using Norwegian register data from 2007 to 2017, this study uses fixed-effects regressions to analyse the math and reading scores of 11,299 children aged 9-15 years, 3 years before and after parental separation. Children's school performance shows a slight decline even before their parents separate, with an additional decline in the years after separation. This pattern is mainly driven by boys and, to a lower extent, by children living in a family with a low socioeconomic status. The findings emphasize the need to consider parental separation as a gradual process rather than a discrete event, highlighting the early emergence of separation effects on children's educational outcomes and the importance of considering heterogeneous effects.
This study investigates whether military conflict intensities in refugees' home regions continue to shape their lives after arrival in a safe haven. While war and local conflict are well-established drivers of initial displacement, it remains unclear whether ongoing conflict influences settlement decision once refugees have escaped the immediate threat. We address this question using longitudinal data from the IAB-BiB/FReDA-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Ukrainian refugees in Germany, linked to high-frequency conflict data from Ukraine following the 2022 Russian invasion. Our findings show that both short- and long-term conflict intensities significantly affect refugees' intentions to settle permanently abroad, with short-term shocks exerting a markedly stronger influence. Emotional responses to acute violence appear to disrupt more deliberative planning, consistent with ecological models of refugee distress. In contrast, long-term conflict intensity effects are weaker and diminish with time spent in the host country, suggesting processes of adaptation or habituation. We also find important heterogeneity: male refugees and those migrating for economic or family reasons are particularly sensitive to conflict dynamics, whereas those with family left behind are generally less inclined to settle permanently. Contrary to expectations, prior war exposure does not moderate current settlement intentions, pointing to possible acclimatization or avoidance strategies among highly exposed individuals. Overall, our results highlight the importance of integrating both emotional and evaluative processes into sociological models of refugee decision-making. They also highlight how even after arrival in safety, evolving home-country violence continues to shape refugees' settlement trajectories.
The expansion of higher educational systems in Western countries in the latter half of the 20th century is central to the reversal of the gender gap in education. In Norway, major reforms starting in the late 1960s aimed at making higher education more accessible for large segments of the population. This occurred through the establishment, upgrading, and gradual expansion of local colleges across the country, especially in female-dominated fields associated with work in expanding welfare sectors. Previous research has suggested that the gendered profile of educational expansions contributed to the cementing of horizontal gender segregation patterns in education and the labour market. We shed light on these processes using new and detailed data on the establishment and upgrading of higher educational institutions between 1969 and 1992. Linking these to individual-level register data, we study how regional variation in educational opportunities affected the educational attainment and field of study choices of young women and men, using an event study approach. While increased access to college education was a prerequisite for the reversal of the gender gap, our results suggest that the location of colleges had, at most, a very modest impact on local educational attainment and gendered field of study choices.
When a child moves home multiple times, the consequences for the adult they will later become can be substantial. This study investigates how frequent relocations during childhood influence the development of social capital in adulthood. Using a combination of retrospective and longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of the Swiss population (N = 4,451), we examine how identity formation and the sense of agency jointly shape individuals' ability to sustain supportive networks over time. Results from structural equation modelling show that individuals who experienced frequent moves in childhood tend to identify less with the city, region, and country in which they live; yet this appears to have no direct consequences for their social capital. In contrast, they report a stronger sense of personal agency-defined as feeling more confident in addressing problems and making decisions-which, in turn, enhances their ability to maintain supportive networks. Overall, the findings highlight that residential mobility in childhood is a complex phenomenon that reshapes how individuals relate to the communities they belong to, to themselves, and to others across the life course.
Inequality of opportunity and its trend over time is one of the most prominent policy concerns in Western countries. In social sciences, intergenerational transmission of education is often used as an indicator of inequality of opportunity. However, this neglects the role of genes. Twin studies parse out the effects of genes, the shared environment and the non-shared environment. This study uses population-wide data on twins and siblings from integral registers of Statistics Netherlands to assess trends in genetic influence ('heritability') and the influence of the shared environment on educational attainment in birth cohorts 1964-1997, including trends in gene x SES interactions. We adapt the classical twin design to estimate heritability in the absence of zygosity information. We found no evidence that inequality increased. In contrast, heritability of educational attainment increased and the shared environmental influence decreased between 1964 and 1970 and again between 1992 and 1997. Furthermore, the 1964-1979 cohort group but not the 1980-1997 cohort group showed a gene x SES interaction: heritability was lower in the lowest SES group than in the highest SES group.
