Maternity leave policies are designed to ease the tension between women’s employment and fertility, but whether they actually play such a role remains unclear. We analyze the individual-level effects of maternity leave on employment outcomes and on second conception rates among Russian...

This paper examines the development of female and maternal labor market participation in western Germany. We discuss major forces that contribute to educational differences in female employment behavior. The empirical investigation draws on data from the scientific-use-files of the...

At the beginning of the transition period, many Russian households faced substantial economic hardships and uncertainties. An economic downturn had become one of the major factors respon-sible for the significant and rapid decline of Russian fertility. However, many households tried to cope with...

While most demographic fertility studies focus on child birth behavior of females, little is known about differences between males and females fertility behavior. The lack of empirical research about men stems from problems such as linking fathers and their biological offspring, biological...

During the 1990s in Russia both abortion and fertility rates declined rapidly. In the present paper, we shed some light on the extent to which these developments were related to increased use of modern contraception. Two surveys with retrospective information on contraceptive calendars reveal...

The paper provides an analysis of divorce risk in first marital unions in Russia, with a major focus on the impact of premarital conception on the stability of subsequent marriage. A number of other predictors are also discussed, including age at first marriage, parity and age of the youngest...

Using data from the first round of the national Gender and Generations Surveys of Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and from a similar survey for Hungary, we study rates of entry into marital and non-marital unions and display manifestations of the Second Demographic Transition in these data. The...

This study examines the relationship between growing inequality within the population, and the general mortality decline in Finland after 1971. The general mortality trend is considered as a simultaneous shift of population groups toward lower mortality over time, with the group-specific...

This research offers fresh evidence 1) on the contribution of social mobility to health differentials by proposing a new link between downward mobility and health: downward mobility itself may have an immediate impact on health, above and beyond selection, origin or destination effects, and 2)...