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Empirical research repeatedly shows cross-country differences in the extent and distribution of socioeconomic inequalities in educational achievement. This observation is the starting point for the comparative DICE-project (Development of Inequalities in Child Educational Achievement: A Six-Country Study). It aims to improve the understanding of child development by socioeconomic status, operationalised in terms of parental education in six countries: France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The project moves beyond cross-sectional and single country snapshots and examines the development of inequalities from 3 years of age up to the end of lower secondary schooling. In this contribution, we introduce the six countries. First, by synthesizing data from a range of international databases we provide a rich and multidimensional characterisation of macrostructural conditions in each country. Linking the contextual situation in the DICE-countries to general theoretical assumptions about the effects of macrostructural conditions, we highlight the implications for cross-national differences in inequalities in educational achievement. Second, we analyse PISA data providing information about achievement test scores at age 15. We study how the different packages of macrostructural characteristics described in the contextual section are reflected in terms of educational inequalities by the end of lower secondary schooling in each country.

According to recent literature the increasing women’s labour market participation is only the first part of the so called gender revolution, while a second part is now unfolding, with an increased participation of men in family life with special attention to childcare. The aim of this paper is to explore fathers’ involvement in parenting tasks within different contexts in terms of gender regimes, family policies, and workplace culture. The idea is to evidence individual factors that may enable/challenge the capability of fathers to stay with children and care for them, and to suggest opportune father-friendly policies. Time with children is compared among a sample of fathers in Time Use survey in France (2009-2010), Italy (2008-09), Sweden (2000-2001) and the UK (2000). Three different measures of father involvement are examined: the total time father spend with their children, the time they spend alone with them, and their engagement in childcare activities. Results show that distinct micro-level factors contribute in determining the three levels of father’s commitment analysed. Few cross-countries differences emerge. Fathers’ involvement is mainly determined by their work-related features, by their children characteristics, and by their partner’s working schedules. Weekday and weekend differences are observed. The quantum of father engagement strongly depends on the countries’ institutional context: it is the highest in Sweden and the lowest in Italy. Fathers’ time with children at the crossroads of the gender revolution: 3 a comparative analysis in France, Italy, Sweden and the UK Acknowledgement: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the research project FamiliesAndSocieties. This comparative study shows the methodological importance of considering different measures of father involvement to understand how micro-level factors influence

Since the 1970s, several European countries have experienced high union dissolution risk as well as high unemployment rates. The extent to which adverse economic conditions are associated with union instability is still unknown. This study explores the relationship between both individual and aggregate unemployment and union dissolution risk in five European countries before the recent economic crisis. Using rich longitudinal data from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, and Italy, the empirical analysis, based on discrete-time event history models, shows that male unemployment consistently increases the risk of union dissolution. While a strong association is observed between male unemployment and separation at the micro level, no association is found between male unemployment and union dissolution at the macro level. The results for female unemployment are mixed, and the size of the impact of female unemployment is smaller in magnitude than that of male unemployment. In Germany and Italy, where until very recently work is less compatible with family life than in other countries, female unemployment is not significantly associated with union dissolution., Seit der 1970er Jahren zeichnen sich viele europäische Länder durch hohe Trennungsraten wie auch hohe Arbeitslosenquoten aus. Bislang ist jedoch unklar, in welchem Zusammenhang ökonomische Entwicklungen und die Stabilität von Partnerschaften stehen. Dieser Beitrag befasst sich damit, wie Arbeitslosigkeit, gemessen auf der Mikro- und Makroebene, das Trennungsrisiko in fünf europäischen Ländern in der Zeit vor der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise beeinflusst hat. Auf Basis umfassender Längsschnittdaten aus Belgien, Finnland, Frankreich, Deutschland und Italien zeigen die empirischen Analysen, in der diskrete Zeitmodelle verwendet werden, dass Arbeitslosigkeit in allen Ländern das Trennungsrisiko prinzipiell erhöht. Während sich vor allem auf der Mikroebene zeigt, dass die individuelle Arbeitslosigkeitserfahrung des Mannes einen positiven Einfluss auf das Trennungsrisiko ausübt, ergeben sich jedoch keine statistisch signifikanten Zusammenhänge auf der Makroebene. Der Einfluss der Arbeitslosigkeit der Frau ist weniger stark ausgeprägt als jene des Mannes und variiert deutlich zwischen den Ländern. In Deutschland und Italien, wo bis vor kurzem Familie und Erwerbstätigkeit wenig vereinbar waren, gibt es keinen statistisch signifikanten Zusammenhang von weiblicher Arbeitslosigkeit und Trennungsraten.

BACKGROUND According to recent literature the increasing women's labour market participation is only the first part of the so called gender revolution, while a second part is now unfolding, with an increased participation of men in family life with special attention to childcare. OBJECTIVE The aim of this paper is to explore fathers' involvement in parenting tasks within different contexts in terms of gender regimes, family policies, and workplace culture. The idea is to evidence individual factors that may enable/challenge the capability of fathers to stay with children and care for them, and to suggest opportune father-friendly policies. METHODS Time with children is compared among a sample of fathers in Time Use survey in France (2009-2010), Italy (2008-09), Sweden (2000-2001) and the UK (2000). Three different measures of father involvement are examined: the total time father spend with their children, the time they spend alone with them, and their engagement in childcare activities. RESULTS Results show that distinct micro-level factors contribute in determining the three levels of father's commitment analysed. Few cross-countries differences emerge. Fathers' involvement is mainly determined by their work-related features, by their children characteristics, and by their partner's working schedules. Weekday and weekend differences are observed. The quantum of father engagement strongly depends on the countries' institutional context: it is the highest in Sweden and the lowest in Italy. CONTRIBUTION This comparative study shows the methodological importance of considering different measures of father involvement to understand how micro-level factors influence the time fathers spend with their children in different institutional context.

Objective: This paper studies postseparation fertility behavior. The aim is to investigate whether, and if so how, separation affects second birth spacing in Western European countries. Methods: This analysis makes use of rich survey data from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, as well as from Finnish register data. We thus cover the behavior of a large proportion of the population of Western Europe. We also use descriptive measures, such as Kaplan¿Meier survival functions and cumulative incidence curves. In the multivariate analysis, we employ event history modeling to show how education relates to postseparation fertility behavior. Results: There are large differences in postseparation fertility behavior across European countries. For Spain and Italy, we find that only a negligibly small proportion of the population have a second child after separating from the other parent of the firstborn child. The countries with the highest proportion of second children with a new partner are the United Kingdom, Germany, and Finland. In all countries, separation after first birth leads to a sharp increase in the birth interval between first and second births. Contribution: Our study is a contribution to the demographic literature that aims at understanding birth spacing patterns in Western Europe. Furthermore, we draw attention to the role of postseparation policies in explaining country differences in fertility behavior in contemporary societies.

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is one of the two pillars of the Generations and Gender Programme designed to improve understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments. This article describes how the theoretical perspectives applied in the survey, the survey design and the questionnaire are related to this objective. The key features of the survey include panel design, multidisciplinarity, comparability, context-sensitivity, inter-generational and gender relationships. The survey applies the life course approach, focussing on the processes of childbearing, partnership dynamics, home leaving, and retiring. The selection of topics for data collection mainly follows the criterion of theoretically grounded relevance to explaining one or more of the mentioned processes. A large portion of the survey deals with economic aspects of life, such as economic activity, income, and economic well-being; a comparably large section is devoted to values and attitudes. Other domains covered by the survey include gender relationships, household composition and housing, residential mobility, social networks and private transfers, education, health, and public transfers. The third chapter of the article describes the motivations for their inclusion. The GGS questionnaire is designed for a face-to-face interview. It includes the core that each participating country needs to implement in full, and four optional sub-modules on nationality and ethnicity, on previous partners, on intentions of breaking up, and on housing, respectively. The participating countries are encouraged to include also the optional sub-modules to facilitate comparative research on these topics.

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is one of the two pillars of the Generations and Gender Programme designed to improve understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments. This article describes how the theoretical perspectives applied in the survey, the survey design and the questionnaire are related to this objective. The key features of the survey include panel design, multidisciplinarity, comparability, context-sensitivity, inter-generational and gender relationships. The survey applies the life course approach, focussing on the processes of childbearing, partnership dynamics, home leaving, and retiring. The selection of topics for data collection mainly follows the criterion of theoretically grounded relevance to explaining one or more of the mentioned processes. A large portion of the survey deals with economic aspects of life, such as economic activity, income, and economic well-being; a comparably large section is devoted to values and attitudes. Other domains covered by the survey include gender relationships, household composition and housing, residential mobility, social networks and private transfers, education, health, and public transfers. The third chapter of the article describes the motivations for their inclusion. The GGS questionnaire is designed for a face-to-face interview. It includes the core that each participating country needs to implement in full, and four optional sub-modules on nationality and ethnicity, on previous partners, on intentions of breaking up, and on housing, respectively. The participating countries are encouraged to include also the optional sub-modules to facilitate comparative research on these topics.

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is one of the two pillars of the Generations and Gender Programme designed to improve understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments. This article describes how the theoretical perspectives applied in the survey, the survey design and the questionnaire are related to this objective. The key features of the survey include panel design, multidisciplinarity, comparability, context-sensitivity, inter-generational and gender relationships. The survey applies the life course approach, focussing on the processes of childbearing, partnership dynamics, home leaving, and retiring. The selection of topics for data collection mainly follows the criterion of theoretically grounded relevance to explaining one or more of the mentioned processes. A large portion of the survey deals with economic aspects of life, such as economic activity, income, and economic well-being; a comparably large section is devoted to values and attitudes. Other domains covered by the survey include gender relationships, household composition and housing, residential mobility, social networks and private transfers, education, health, and public transfers. The third chapter of the article describes the motivations for their inclusion. The GGS questionnaire is designed for a face-to-face interview. It includes the core that each participating country needs to implement in full, and four optional sub-modules on nationality and ethnicity, on previous partners, on intentions of breaking up, and on housing, respectively. The participating countries are encouraged to include also the optional sub-modules to facilitate comparative research on these topics.

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is one of the two pillars of the Generations and Gender Programme designed to improve understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments. This article describes how the theoretical perspectives applied in the survey, the survey design and the questionnaire are related to this objective. The key features of the survey include panel design, multidisciplinarity, comparability, context-sensitivity, inter-generational and gender relationships. The survey applies the life course approach, focussing on the processes of childbearing, partnership dynamics, home leaving, and retiring. The selection of topics for data collection mainly follows the criterion of theoretically grounded relevance to explaining one or more of the mentioned processes. A large portion of the survey deals with economic aspects of life, such as economic activity, income, and economic well-being; a comparably large section is devoted to values and attitudes. Other domains covered by the survey include gender relationships, household composition and housing, residential mobility, social networks and private transfers, education, health, and public transfers. The third chapter of the article describes the motivations for their inclusion. The GGS questionnaire is designed for a face-to-face interview. It includes the core that each participating country needs to implement in full, and four optional sub-modules on nationality and ethnicity, on previous partners, on intentions of breaking up, and on housing, respectively. The participating countries are encouraged to include also the optional sub-modules to facilitate comparative research on these topics.

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is one of the two pillars of the Generations and Gender Programme designed to improve understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments. This article describes how the theoretical perspectives applied in the survey, the survey design and the questionnaire are related to this objective. The key features of the survey include panel design, multidisciplinarity, comparability, context-sensitivity, inter-generational and gender relationships. The survey applies the life course approach, focussing on the processes of childbearing, partnership dynamics, home leaving, and retiring. The selection of topics for data collection mainly follows the criterion of theoretically grounded relevance to explaining one or more of the mentioned processes. A large portion of the survey deals with economic aspects of life, such as economic activity, income, and economic well-being; a comparably large section is devoted to values and attitudes. Other domains covered by the survey include gender relationships, household composition and housing, residential mobility, social networks and private transfers, education, health, and public transfers. The third chapter of the article describes the motivations for their inclusion. The GGS questionnaire is designed for a face-to-face interview. It includes the core that each participating country needs to implement in full, and four optional sub-modules on nationality and ethnicity, on previous partners, on intentions of breaking up, and on housing, respectively. The participating countries are encouraged to include also the optional sub-modules to facilitate comparative research on these topics.

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is one of the two pillars of the Generations and Gender Programme designed to improve understanding of demographic and social development and of the factors that influence these developments. This article describes how the theoretical perspectives applied in the survey, the survey design and the questionnaire are related to this objective. The key features of the survey include panel design, multidisciplinarity, comparability, context-sensitivity, inter-generational and gender relationships. The survey applies the life course approach, focussing on the processes of childbearing, partnership dynamics, home leaving, and retiring. The selection of topics for data collection mainly follows the criterion of theoretically grounded relevance to explaining one or more of the mentioned processes. A large portion of the survey deals with economic aspects of life, such as economic activity, income, and economic well-being; a comparably large section is devoted to values and attitudes. Other domains covered by the survey include gender relationships, household composition and housing, residential mobility, social networks and private transfers, education, health, and public transfers. The third chapter of the article describes the motivations for their inclusion. The GGS questionnaire is designed for a face-to-face interview. It includes the core that each participating country needs to implement in full, and four optional sub-modules on nationality and ethnicity, on previous partners, on intentions of breaking up, and on housing, respectively. The participating countries are encouraged to include also the optional sub-modules to facilitate comparative research on these topics.

This article analyses the extent to which changes in household composition over the life course affect the gender division of labour. It identifies and analyses cross-country disparities between France, Italy, Sweden and United States, using most recent data available from the Time Use National Surveys. We focus on gender differences in the allocation of time between market work, domestic work and leisure over the life-cycle. In order to map the lifecycle, we distinguish between nine key cross-country comparable life stages according to age and family structure such as exiting parental home, union formation, parenthood, and retiring from work. By using appropriate regression techniques (Tobit with selection, Tobit and OLS), we show large discrepancies in the gender division of labour at the different life stages. This gender gap exists in all countries at any stage of the life course, but is usually smaller at the two ends of the age distribution, and larger with parenthood. Beyond social norms, the impact of parenthood on time allocation varies across countries, being smaller in those where work-family balance policies are more effective and traditionally well established.

Cet article établit un bilan des études économiques sur le lien entre le chômage et la vie en couple. Il questionne les relations bidirectionnelles qui peuvent exister au niveau microéconomique et macroéconomique. Le chômage affecte la vie de couple. Il retarde sa formation, modifie la division du travail au sein de la famille, et augmente le risque de dissolution. Les effets sont plus marqués pour les hommes. Inversement, une rupture conjugale a tendance à augmenter le risque de chômage. Les caractéristiques inobservées peuvent expliquer beaucoup des corrélations observées et le prochain enjeu des recherches économiques sur ce sujet est d’arriver à démêler les causes des effets., This article establishes an assessment of the economic studies on the relationship between unemployment and marital status. It questions the bidirectional relationship that could exist both at the micro level and macro level. Unemployment affects marital life. It delays couple formation, changes the division of labor within the couple, and increases the risk of couple dissolution. The effect of man’s unemployment is more marked than those of the woman. Conversely divorce and separation tend to increase the risk of unemployment. Many unobserved characteristics might explain the observed correlations and the next challenging goal of future research in economics in this field is to carefully try to disentangle determinants from consequences.

Though shared custody arrangements after divorce are more and more frequent in many countries, little is known about their economic consequences for parents. By relaxing family time constraints, does shared custody help divorced mothers return to work more easily? This article analyses to what extent the type of child custody arrangement affects mothers’ labour market behaviours after divorce. Using a large sample of divorcees from an exhaustive French administrative income-tax database, and taking advantage of the huge territorial discrepancies observed in the proportion of shared custody, we correct for the possible endogeneity of shared custody. As it turns out, the probability of being employed is 16 percentage points higher for mothers with shared custody arrangements compared to those having sole physical custody, with huge heterogeneous effects: larger positive effects are observed for previously inactive women, for those belonging to the lowest income quintiles before divorce, for those with a young child, and for those who have three or more children. Shared custody is particularly helpful for women who are far removed from the labour market.

Cet article établit un bilan des études économiques sur le lien entre le chômage et la vie en couple. Il questionne les relations bidirectionnelles qui peuvent exister au niveau microéconomique et macroéconomique. Le chômage affecte la vie de couple. Il retarde sa formation, modifie la division du travail au sein de la famille, et augmente le risque de dissolution. Les effets sont plus marqués pour les hommes. Inversement, une rupture conjugale a tendance à augmenter le risque de chômage. Les caractéristiques inobservées peuvent expliquer beaucoup des corrélations observées et le prochain enjeu des recherches économiques sur ce sujet est d’arriver à démêler les causes des effets., This article establishes an assessment of the economic studies on the relationship between unemployment and marital status. It questions the bidirectional relationship that could exist both at the micro level and macro level. Unemployment affects marital life. It delays couple formation, changes the division of labor within the couple, and increases the risk of couple dissolution. The effect of man’s unemployment is more marked than those of the woman. Conversely divorce and separation tend to increase the risk of unemployment. Many unobserved characteristics might explain the observed correlations and the next challenging goal of future research in economics in this field is to carefully try to disentangle determinants from consequences.