Divorce,living arrangements,and material well-being during the transition to adulthood in rural Malawi

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women’s own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women’s post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage.     

Group living decisions as youths transition to adulthood

This study follows teens through young adulthood as they transition to independent living. We focus on a little studied issue: why some youths live in groups rather than alone or with parents. This choice is important because the size of the group has a substantial impact on the demand for dwelling units; the more youths per dwelling the lower is aggregate demand and the greater is population density. Our study also adds to the knowledge of which factors influence youths' choice of destination as they leave the parental home. The empirical testing uses a discrete hazard model within a multinomial logit framework to allow for more than one possible state transition. We find that economic variables have little impact on the decision of whether to exit to a large versus a small group, while socio-demographic variables matter. We also test a new push-pull hypothesis and find that the pull of economic variables on the probability of exiting the parental home increases as youths reach their mid to late twenties. Received: 15 July 1999/Accepted: 15 May 2000     

European Welfare regimes and the transition to adulthood: A comparative and longitudinal perspective

Social Indicators Research -     

Living arrangements of migrant and Dutch young adults: the family influence disentangled

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the family of origin on whether migrant and Dutch young adults live in the parental home. Using a sample of 1,678 young adults aged between 15 and 30 years from 847 families with five different ethnic backgrounds, we identified patterns of co-residence and investigated how and to what extent the likelihood of co-residence was influenced by migrant background, family ties, and the socio-economic characteristics of the family. The results show that of the four migrant groups, only Moroccan young adults are more likely than those of Dutch origin to live with their parents. For both migrant and Dutch young adults, family ties and the socio-economic characteristics of the family rather than an ethnic factor are the major influences on living arrangements.     

Internal migration age patterns and the transition to adulthood: Australia and Great Britain compared

Life-course transitions are important drivers of mobility, resulting in a concentration of migration at young adult ages. While there is increasing evidence of cross-national variations in the ages at which young adults move, the relative importance of various key life-course transitions in shaping these differences remains poorly understood. Prior studies typically focus on a single country and examine the influence of a single transition on migration, independently from other life-course events. To better understand the determinants of cross-national variations in migration ages, this paper analyses for Australia and Great Britain the joint influence of five key life-course transitions on migration: (1) higher education entry, (2) labour force entry, (3) partnering, (4) marriage and (5) family formation. We first characterise the age profile of short- and long-distance migration and the age profile of life-course transitions. We then use event-history analysis to establish the relative importance of each life-course transitions on migration. Our results show that the age structure and the relative importance of life-course transitions vary across countries, shaping differences in migration age patterns. In Great Britain, the strong association of migration with multiple transitions explains the concentration of migration at young adult ages, which is further amplified by the age-concentration and alignment of multiple transitions at similar ages. By contrast in Australia a weaker influence of life-course transitions on migration, combined with a dispersion of entry into higher education across a wide age range, contribute to a protracted migration age profile. Comparison by distance moved reveals further differences in the mix of transitions driving migration in each country, confirming the impact of the life-course in shaping migration age patterns.     

Living arrangements of widows in the United States and Israel, 1960 and 1961

One of the neglected areas in the study of the social structure of the family is that of widowhood, the last stage in the family life cycle. A study of living arrangements of the widowed provides an opportunity to examine the kinship solidarity of a society and to point up in bold relief the influence of a variety of factors that contribute to the residential patterns of the widowed. The data in this study were drawn from the 1960 Census of the United States and the 1961 Census of Israel, the latest which offer comparable data. Five ethnic-religious groups are examined in Israel and eight in the United States. Goode and others have stated that family modernization is a universal trend, and this is borne out by the results of this study. The small family system shows that age and children ever born are the most important predictors of living alone among the widowed in both countries. Otherwise, among the 13 ethnic-religious and ethnic-racial groups there is a general similarity of the importance of the variables in the total prediction scheme.     

The analysis of early life courses: Complex descriptions of the transition to adulthood

The quantitative analysis of life courses has to deal with a complex pattern of interrelated events and trajectories. Such a complex pattern needs complex measurement tools, even if only to describe the experience of cohorts. This paper addresses the methodological issue of describing the transition to adulthood from a life course perspective, following an event-based definition. New proposals are developed and traditional approaches are discussed, using Italy as an example. A generalization of survivor functions for the analysis of the temporal relationships between two events is introduced and applied. The paper then deals with the problem of describing the process of transition to adulthood as a whole, making use of the sequence analysis approach with special emphasis on the empirical analyses of the ‘standardization vs individualization’ hypotheses.     

Feathered nest/gilded cage: Parental income and leaving home in the transition to adulthood

The growing study of leaving home in young adulthood in the United States has been hampered by data and measurement problems, which are producing a major theoretical confusion about the role of parental resources in influencing young adults’ leaving home. Does high parental income retain young adults in the home or subsidize their leaving (and parental privacy)? This paper uses the 1984 panel of Survey of Income and Program Participation to clarify this issue, and shows that the effects of parental resources differ depending on the route out of the home under consideration (marriage or premarital residential independence). Effects change substantially over the nest-leaving ages, but relatively few differences are found between young men and young women.     

Quality of life for students with disabilities in transition from school to adulthood

This paper examines quality-of-life concerns that pertain to secondary level students with disabilities who participate in high school programs in the United States. More specifically, we examine issues and programs that pertain to the “transition period” during which students leave school and begin to assume adult roles in their communities. The paper begins with an overview of major programs that have addressed this area over the past 25 years. We then present some contrasting definitions of quality of life, in order to provide a theoretical context for examining issues and concerns, ending with our recommendations for a taxonomy that can be used for operationally defining quality of life. Research findings from this perspective are presented next, followed by a discussion of ways in which quality-of-life information can beused to influence program and policy and policy decisions at both personal and institutional levels of discourse. We cite and describe several examples of such usage from our own experiences. The paper closes with some recommendations concerning what we must do in the future to improve quality of life for this population.     

Living arrangements of older malaysians: Who coresides with their adult children?

More than two-thirds of Malaysians age 60 or older coreside with an adult child. Data from the Senior sample of the Second Malaysian Family Life Survey (MFLS-2) are used to investigate which “seniors” (persons age 60 or older) live in this way. The analysis generally supports the notion that coresidence is influenced by the benefits, costs, opportunities, and preferences for coresidence versus separate living arrangements. For example, married seniors are more likely to coreside with adult children when housing costs are greater in their area or when the husband or wife is in poor health. This finding suggests that married parents and children live together to economize on living costs or to receive help with household services. Unmarried seniors who are better off economically are less likely to live with adult children, presumably because they use their higher incomes to “purchase privacy.”     

Living arrangements of the elderly in Poland--evidence from survey Life Course (Family,Occupation and Migratory Biography), 1988

"The paper presents a structural analysis of the living arrangements of the elderly in Poland based on the results of [a 1988] Polish retrospective survey.... Evaluation of living arrangements includes persons aged 60 and over and concentrates mainly on: family and household composition, intergenerational transfers, occupational activity of retired persons and selected aspects of health and life satisfaction."     

National and subnational projections of elderly living arrangements: An application of the net transition probability macrosimulation model

Recently, McDonaldet al. (2006) outlined a new method of projecting living arrangements, households and dwellings at the national and subnational level, using quinquennial census data. The purpose of this paper is to apply this new simulation method to project the composition of elderly living arrangements at the national and subnational level in Australia over the period 2001 to 2016. This study presents projections of living arrangements for Temporal Statistical Districts within New South Wales and for Australia as a whole. Results show a strong increase in the number of the elderly living alone, particularly elderly males. The rate of growth in lone-person households is particularly strong in coastal and regional New South Wales, underlining the importance of capturing subnational differences in probabilities of births, deaths, migration and household movements when producing regional projections of living arrangements. This paper concludes by considering implications of the findings and potential uses of the net transition probability method.     

老年人口居住安排与居住意愿研究

文章基于2011年中国社会状况调查数据,分析城乡老年人口居住安排现状及居住意愿。研究结果表明,老年人口家庭规模日益缩小,老年空巢家庭数量不仅在城市大幅提高,农村的独居老人家庭比例也在持续上升。在老年人理想居住方式方面,能否自理对老年人的养老意愿产生很大影响。在生活可以自理时,老年人以居家养老为主,希望独居的比例较高;在生活不能自理时,城市老人希望到机构养老和与子女同住的比例提高。此外,婚姻状况、教育程度、居住地类型、生活费来源等对养老的居住安排有显著影响。     

Child gender and the transition to marriage

We estimate the effect of a child's gender on the mother's probability of marriage or remarriage using data from the PSID Marital History and Childbirth and Adoption History Files. We find that the birth of a son speeds the transition into marriage when the child is born before the mother's first marriage. A competing-risks analysis shows that the positive effect of a son is stronger for marriages to the child's biological father than for other marriages. We find no significant effect of child gender on the mother's remarriage probabilities when the children are born within a previous marriage. These results are consistent with a marital-search model in which sons, more than daughters, increase the value of marriage relative to single parenthood.     

Family structure and the transition to early parenthood

With the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce in the last quarter of the twentieth century, an increasing proportion of children have been exposed to a variety of new family forms. Little research has focused on the consequences of childhood family structure for men’s transition to fatherhood or on the family processes that account for the effects of family structure on the likelihood that young women and men become first-time unmarried parents, what we now call “fragile families.” The data come from the linked Children and Young Adult samples of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), which provide information on the children of the women of the NLSY79 from birth until they enter young adulthood. Females growing up with a single parent and males experiencing an unstable family transition to parenthood early, particularly to nonresidential fatherhood for males. For males, the effects are strongly mediated by parenting processes and adolescent behaviors and are shaped by economic circumstances. Having experienced multiple transitions as a child is associated with a reduced likelihood that males father their first child within marriage and an increased likelihood that they become fathers within cohabitation, demonstrating how changes in family structure alter family structure patterns over time and generations.     

Comparing the Monetary and Living Standards Approaches to Poverty Using the Australian Experience

This paper compares the monetary and living standards approaches to poverty using Australian data for the period 2006–2017. The aim is to highlight the conceptual and empirical strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches and identify the similarities and differences that emerge when both are applied to examine what happened over the period and to a limited degree, why. The acknowledged limitations of estimating poverty rates by comparing household income with a poverty line have to a degree been addressed by developments in deprivation research that have generated estimates that are more directly related to living standards, more democratic and more credible. But this approach also has limitations, so its growing popularity need not signify the end of poverty line studies. This paper compares the two approaches, with specific attention paid to ensuring that the estimates are internally consistent over time and comparable at a point in time. Both show a consistent pattern of modest improvement in social disadvantage over the period examined, but they reveal different aspects of change. The monetary approach highlights the role of housing costs in driving changes in poverty, while the more nuanced explanation generated by estimates of deprivation provides detailed insights. The results suggest that each has a positive role to play in better understanding the nature of poverty and identifying the factors driving change over time.

     

Assisted Living and the Aging Trajectory

ABSTRACT

Assisted living (AL) is a caregiving option between independent living and nursing home placement. This study explores women residents' experience of AL in four Midwestern facilities, using interview and field research methods. We found that most residents wanted to stay in AL rather than move to a nursing home; they looked backward nostalgically toward home, and complied with staff rules and directives in order to remain in place. In contrast to nursing homes, AL allows residents to experience continuities with self and home: a private room, some of their own belongings, and access to relationships and activities associated with self and home. Given the expanded lifespan and growing popularity of AL, it is becoming a new stage in the trajectory of women's aging.     

Regional paths to fertility transition

New sources of data on national fertility declines are used to examine the nature of fertility transition in major regions. These regions are defined by geographical and cultural criteria as well as by the forces attempting to shape fertility control. Particular attention is devoted to the timing of the onsets of fertility decline in the different countries of each region, and the rapidity of fertility decline within each country. The study finds greater similarities between the transitions than have sometimes been assumed.