Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the role of childbearing history in later life health and mortality, paying particular attention to possible differences by sex and region. Higher parity is associated with better self-rated health in Western German mothers and...

This paper investigates whether and how regional social contexts influence fertility decisions of women living in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. It is argued that regional opportunity structures as well as local patterns of social interaction and culture may translate into...

To begin with, we sketch a general multilevel model of regional social contexts and individual family formation behavior, where particular attention is paid to the determinants of the actor's situation. Then a set of bridge hypotheses is proposed, on which the empirical investigation of the...

In this paper, we take a multilevel perspective to investigate the role of child care in the transition to motherhood in Germany. We argue that in the European institutional context the availability of public day care and informal child care arrangements should be a central element of the local...

Eine zentrale Rolle in der aktuellen Diskussion um eine bessere Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf spielt die Versorgung mit bedarfsgerechter Kinderbetreuung. Eine umfassendes Angebot an Betreuungsplätzen fördert jedoch nicht nur die Müttererwerbstätigkeit, sondern könnte sich auch positiv...