Umeå University's logo

This study examines the consequences of parental job displacement for birth outcomes and investigates how the effects vary with regional unemployment rates. We use Swedish register data and exploit plausibly exogenous variation caused by workplace closure to reduce the bias related to reverse causality and confounding. The differences in birth outcomes between children of parents who experienced job displacement and children of parents who were not displaced turn out to be quite modest. Even in the most disadvantaged regions, with the highest unemployment rates, parental job displacement is not harmful for health at birth. We relate these findings to the institutional setting in Sweden and discuss policy implications for the United States.

Intra-family crossover effects triggered by job losses have received growing attention across scientific disciplines, but existing research has reached discrepant conclusions concerning if, and if so how, parental job losses affect child mental health. Drawing on sociological models of stress and life course epidemiology, we ask if parental job losses have long-term effects on child mental health, and if these effects are conditional on the timing of, or the cumulative exposure to, job losses. We use intergenerationally linked Swedish register data combined with entropy balance and structural nested mean models for the analyses. The data allow us to track 400,000 children over 14 years and thereby test different life-course models of cross-over effects. We identify involuntary job losses using information on workplace closures, thus reducing the risk of confounding. Results show that paternal but not maternal job loss significantly increases the risk of psychotropic drug use among children, that the average effects are modest in size (less than 4% in relative terms), that they may persist for up to five years, and that they are driven by children aged 6–10 years. Moreover, cumulative exposure to multiple job losses are more harmful than zero or one job loss.

Grandparental support may protect mothers from depression, particularly mothers who separate and enter single parenthood. Using longitudinal Finnish register data on 116,917 separating and 371,703 non-separating mothers with young children, we examined differences in mothers’ antidepressant purchases by grandparental characteristics related to provision of support. Grandparents’ younger age (<70 years), employment, and lack of severe health problems predicted a lower probability of maternal depression. Depression was also less common if grandparents lived close to the mother and if the maternal grandparents’ union was intact. Differences in maternal depression by grandparental characteristics were larger among separating than among non-separating mothers, particularly during the years before separation. Overall, maternal grandmothers’ characteristics appeared to matter most, while the role of paternal grandparents was smaller. The findings suggest that grandparental characteristics associated with increased potential for providing support and decreased need of receiving support predict a lower likelihood of maternal depression, particularly among separating mothers.

Parental unemployment can have detrimental effects on life chances of the children, and thereby reinforce inequalities across generations. Despite a substantial literature documenting that the health of infants at birth can have large and long-lasting consequences, research on intergenerational unemployment effects on infant health is scant. This study fills the gap using high-quality register data from Sweden, including 1.5 million siblings born between 1996 and 2017. To account for selection into unemployment, we employ sibling comparison designs that exploit variation in siblings’ exposure to parental unemployment, thereby accounting for stable but unmeasured confounding at the level of families. We find small and not consistently significant effects of maternal unemployment, and no effects of paternal unemployment. Our results also suggest that pre-existing social disadvantages - low education, migration background, and dual parental unemployment -are not associated with more adverse intergenerational unemployment effects. The discussion of our findings situates these results in the context of a relatively generous and egalitarian welfare state.

Crossover effects of parental unemployment on subjective wellbeing of children attract growing attention in research on social inequalities. Recent economic crises call for identifying policies that mitigate the adverse effects of unemployment. Building on the theoretical insights from Capability Approach, we examine the relationship between parental unemployment and subjective wellbeing of adolescents across countries with different educational policies. We use multilevel modelling and data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). We combine microdata on 45,992 adolescents in 32 countries with macro-level indicators of educational policies. We find that parental unemployment is associated with lower subjective wellbeing among adolescents, but the magnitude of this association varies depending on access to financial support for participation in education. Adolescents who receive educational allowances and who live in countries with broader access to such support are less harmed by parental unemployment.

Unemployment affects not only the subjective well-being of the individual, but also that of the partner. Based on the life course perspective and the spillover-crossover-model, we examine the mediating role of relationship functioning for such crossover effects of partner’s unemployment on subjective well-being. We also test whether gender differences in the mechanism of relationship functioning can explain the larger overall crossover effects on women compared to men. We use data from the German Family Panel pairfam (2008/09-2018/19), which provide more direct and comprehensive measures of relationship functioning than previous research, and allow us to examine couples’ communication and interactions, their conflict styles and behaviors, relationship satisfaction, and perceived relationship instability as mediators. To analyze the impact of the partner’s transition to unemployment on subjective well-being, we use fixed effects panel regression models and the product method of mediation analysis to estimate the indirect effects of relationship functioning. The results show that a partner’s transition to unemployment has a negative impact on one’s own well-being. The effects are more pronounced for women than men which can be partly explained by gender-specific effects of the partner’s unemployment on various aspects of relationship functioning, rather than by differential effects of the latter on one’s own well-being.

Objective: This paper provides the first comprehensive evidence on the effects of adult children’s unemploymenton parental mental health in Europe, exploring the potential moderators related to parents’ and children’s genderas well as the number and birth order of children’s siblings.

Background: The spillover–crossover model contextualizes the impact of experiences related to working life onthe health and wellbeing of family members. Parents’ and children’s gender is considered as potential moderatorbased on theories on gendered differences in how adverse life course events of significant others affect mentalhealth. Additionally, demographic theories point to the number and order of children determining parentalinvestments in offspring as well as parental expectations toward children’s achievements.

Method: We apply general structural equation modeling to data from the sixth wave of the Survey of Health,Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).

Results: Our results confirm the negative association between adult children’s unemployment and their parents’mental health. These crossover effects are found to be similar according to gender and also child birth order.

Conclusion: The intergenerational influence of adult children’s employment on their older parents is confirmed.However, our findings also challenge theoretical ideas suggesting that negative labor market experiences ofdaughters or firstborn children might be more detrimental for parents than those of other children. 

Crossover effects of critical life events within families have received growing attention in life-courseresearch. A parent losing a job is among the most distressing events that can befall a family, butexisting research has reached discrepant conclusions concerning if, and if so how, this affects childmental health. Drawing on insights from models of intra-family influence and life courseepidemiological models, we ask if parental job loss have latent or long-term effects on child mentalhealth, if the effects are conditional on the timing of the job loss, and if repeated job losses havecumulative effects.We use intergenerationally linked Swedish register data combined with entropy balance andstructural nested mean models for the analyses. The data allow us to track 400,000 children over 14years and thereby test different life-course models of crossover effects. We identify involuntary joblosses using information on workplace closures, thus reducing the risk of confounding.Results show that paternal but not maternal job loss significantly increases the risk of mental healthproblems among children, that the average effects are modest in size (less than 4% in relativeterms), that they materialize only after some years, and that they are driven by children aged 6-10years. Moreover, we find evidence of cumulative effects, but also of declining marginal harm ofadditional job losses over the life course.

Low-wage jobs are often regarded as dead-ends in the labour market careers of young people. Previous research focused on disentangling to what degree the association between a low-wage job at the start of working life and limited chances of transitioning to better-paid employment is causal or spurious. Less attention has been paid to the channels that may facilitate the upward wage mobility of low-wage workers. We focus on such mechanisms, and we scrutinize the impact of social ties to higher-educated co-workers. Due to knowledge spillovers, job referrals, as well as firm-level productivity gains, having higher-educated co-workers may improve an individual's chances of transitioning to a better-paid job. We use linked employer-employee data from longitudinal Swedish registers and panel data models that incorporate measures of low-wage workers' social ties to higher-educated co-workers. Our results confirm that having social ties to higher-educated co-workers increases individual chances of transitioning to better-paid employment.

Although preterm birth is the leading cause of perinatal morbidity and mortality in advanced economies, evidence about the consequences of prematurity in later life is limited. Using Swedish registers for cohorts born 1982–94 (N  =  1,087,750), we examine the effects of preterm birth on school grades at age 16 using sibling fixed effects models. We further examine how school grades are affected by degree of prematurity and the compensating roles of family socio-economic resources and characteristics of school districts. Our results show that the negative effects of preterm birth are observed mostly among children born extremely preterm (<28 weeks); children born moderately preterm (32–<37 weeks) suffer no ill effects. We do not find any evidence for a moderating effect of parental socio-economic resources. Children born extremely preterm and in the top decile of school districts achieve as good grades as children born at full term in an average school district.