Research Projects

About

The aim of this project is to study how individuals’ educational careers and competence trajectories unfold over the life course in relation to family background, educational institutions, workplaces, and private life events. 

Scientific Background

Studying educational opportunities has a long tradition in sociological inequality research and many have argued that education is key to stratification in society. Modern societies have evolved into knowledge-based economies in which the role of education and the acquisition of skills have become important in all phases of the life course. In contrast to most empirical research on education, which is based on cross-sectional studies, the eduLIFE project takes a longitudinal view of educational careers over the life course.

Research

The eduLIFE project analyses the educational career over the life course in four phases covering early childhood education, secondary and tertiary education, the transition from school to work, and adult learning. A number of country studies are conducted within each of these phases in collaboration with country experts and using high-quality longitudinal data. Based on cross-national comparisons, eduLIFE aims to establish the generality of findings as well as the impact of institutional contexts.

About

The main objective of this project is the analysis of the effects of family forms and dynamics on children’s short- and long-term welfare. In doing so, the work package also investigates how families contribute to the inter-generational reproduction of inequality.

Research Focus

The main objective of this project is the analysis of the effects of family forms and dynamics on children’s short- and long-term welfare. In doing so, the work package also investigates how families contribute to the inter-generational reproduction of inequality.

Project Goals

We address the main objective by analysing five partial ones:

1. Analyze effects of various forms of family configurations. Most studies have analyzed the effects of experiencing parental divorce or growing up in a single family. However, as family forms are becoming more complex, there is increasing need to understand the effects of this family diversity on children’s lives.

2. Analyze the causal effects of family forms and dynamics. Although a lot is known about the associations between family forms and dynamics and children’s outcomes, a lot remains to be learned about causal effects of these forms and dynamics on children’s lives. We use high-quality data accompanied by advanced methodology to analyze these causal effects.

3. Analyze parenting and social relationships in family diversity. How social relations and care are arranged in diversifying families remains a question of great interest. We analyze how family forms and dynamics affect the relationships between children and their parents and grand-parents.

4. Analyze heterogeneity of effects in different cultural and socioeconomic groups. The majority of the existing studies focus on homogeneous populations or average effects over diverse ones. We analyse whether some socioeconomic or cultural groups are better endowed in dealing with the consequences of different family forms and dynamics

About

This project aims to describe and analyze the emergence of gender-specific structures of educational and job careers and to compare these patterns across cohorts. 

Scientific Background

Gender differences in educational trajectories and job careers have changed dramatically over the life course and across birth cohorts. There has been an impressive equalization and even partial reversal of educational inequalities of men and women across cohorts. At the same time, however, gender-specific subject orientations, competencies, educational choices and occupation-specific interests seem to be quite stable. Women’s better education clearly has improved their chances at labor market entry and their career opportunities. However, in Germany women still seem to experience a weakening of their career prospects at the time of first birth. This project aims to describe and analyze the emergence of gender-specific structures of educational and job careers and to compare these patterns across cohorts.

Research

The aim of this project is to study how gender-specific interests, motivations, competences, and decision making unfold over the life course in relation to family background, educational institutions, workplaces, and private life events. In particular, this project studies gender-specific disparities in different stages of the educational and occupational career throughout the life course and at various transition points. Thus, the project is structured according to the main educational stages and transitions within the life course. The project takes an explicit life course perspective and utilises longitudinal data from the new National Educational Panel Study (NEPS).

Publications

Bukodi E., Eibl F., Buchholz S., Marzadro S., Minello A., Wahler S., Blossfeld H-P., Erikson R. and Schizzerotto A., (2015) Linking the macro to the micro: a multidimensional approach to educational inequalities in four European countries. Barnett Papers in Social Research, n.10, 2015.

A. Minello and H.P. Blossfeld (2016) "From parents to children: The impact of mothers’ and fathers’ educational attainments on those of their sons and daughters in West Germany", British Journal of Sociology of Education, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2016.1150156

A. Minello and H.P. Blossfeld (forthcoming) Can adult education compensate for early disadvantages? The role of adult education in reducing inequalities for German men and women, in Erola J. and Kilpi-Jakonen E. (eds) Social Inequality Across the Generations: The Role of Compensation and Multiplication in Resource Accumulation, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Work in progress

Minello A. and H-P, Blossfeld, Attitude toward marriage or the marriage market? The effects of job participation, gender segregation of the labour market and education on the transition to the first marriage in Germany. Presented at: RC28 2014 conference, Budapest, May 8-10.

Minello A. and H-P, Blossfeld, Why not math? Determinants of the choice of STEM fields among German students. Presented in Bamberg at the 1st International NEPS User Conference, July 7-8, 2016 , LIfBi Bamberg.

About

The project studies life courses of persons aged 50+ at the time of the interview. Our results will provide important new insight into the dual relationship between SES and health and will help to understand and to tackle social differences in health. 

Research Focus

People with lower income or lower educational level have worse health and higher mortality. This project addresses the two basic underlying questions for this finding: How does your socioeconomic status determine your health? And how does your health determine your socioeconomic status? The project studies life courses of persons aged 50+ at the time of the interview who were surveyed prospectively, and also retrospectively for their entire life history starting at childhood. Our results will provide important new insight into the dual relationship between SES and health and will help to understand and to tackle social differences in health.

Scientific Background

We will use data from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) from 30,000 individuals in 14 European countries, and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) that offers the same data for more than 7,000 persons. This data contains exact information on periods and events of ill health and periods and events of change in socioeconomic status. In addition, there is explicit information on the consequences of poor health in childhood in terms of schooling, or, later in life, in terms of working hours or career perspectives. Life histories from childhood to old age are the ideal basis for disentangling causality between SES and health because confounding of the key variables prior to measurement is minimal.

Methodology

By applying simultaneous equation models for hazards (survival analysis), the correlated processes of health deterioration (influenced by SES) and the development of SES (influenced by health) can be disentangled. This will produce unbiased estimates of the effect sizes for both causation directions and answer the question of causation and selection in a life course perspective taking into account endogeneity and confounders. We will also reveal if common background factors are influencing both SES and health and we will identify possible differences in the causation direction between life stages.

Research Goals

• To integrate disparate theories, causal models and research traditions from epidemiology and economics by reviewing recent empirical findings, theoretical developments and reasons for disciplinary differences in order to use and develop further an interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical basis for studying the interdisciplinary problem of SES and health.

• To address the problem of endogeneity in the question of causality between SES and health by empirically analyzing complete records of life histories from the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).
• To disentangle the direction of causality by analyzing the correlated processes of health deterioration (influenced by SES) and change of SES (influenced by health) using multi-process modeling (simultaneous equation models) for hazards.
• To compare the relative contribution of social causation and social selection between age groups in order to show the life course pattern of causality between SES and health and its dependency on other determinants.
• To estimate the impact of observed and unobserved background factors (unobserved heterogeneity), the latter by letting error terms on the individual level correlate between the two processes under study. This will reveal to what extent both SES and health are caused by common background factors.