< Back to previous page

Project

The Development of a Register-Based Socio-Demographic Panel to Study Work-Family Behaviour.

The development of a professional career and formation of a family are two common life-goals. As a result, the recursive relation between paid work and family formation is a long-standing research topic in the social sciences, particularly in today's era of dual earner households and state-provided work-family policies. Available research has shown that work and family life have become more compatible as employment-effects on family formation are becoming more positive and the negative effect of parenthood on employment is weakening. The fact that in particular North-western European countries with extensive work-family policies exhibit these changes in the work-family nexus, suggests that these policies have played an important role.However, besides this general narrative of increasing combinability of work and family in countries like Belgium, available literature does not allow one to conclude on whether work-family combination has become easier for everyone in our society. This is noteworthy as differences between genders, educational groups, or migrant origins are likely to enhance our understanding of work-family behaviour in relation to public policy. Additionally, policy-makers cannot be satisfied with general trends in work-family behaviours and policy uptake as social inclusion stands central in the development of social policy.Literature reviews indicate that these gaps in our knowledge are often related to limited data availability. First, routinely used cross-sectional data do not allow to follow individuals over time and assess how employment affects family formation and vice versa. Second, a lack of couple data hampers the study of couple-decisions and gender dynamics in the organization of work and family. Third, surveys do not include information on the uptake of work-family policies, which is essential to the measurement of policy effects. Fourth, limited sample sizes have hampered the study of differential work-family behaviour by population subgroups such as educational of ethnic groups. Finally, although cross-national comparisons are potentially very informative on the impact of societal and institutional context, available comparisons remain very descriptive due to the aforementioned limitations. As a result of the limitations of available data sources in the study of work-family behaviour, this project aims to enhance our knowledge by developing a Socio-demographic panel based on data from the Crossroads Bank for Social Security and the National Register. This data source allows a (i) longitudinal (ii) couple-level assessment of (iii) uptake and effects of work-family policies (formal childcare, parental leave, service vouchers) (iv) for detailed population subgroups. In addition, (v) close cooperation with our partner institutes in other North-western European countries with access to detailed register data will allow to compare work-family dynamics between countries.
Date:1 Apr 2018 →  31 Mar 2019
Keywords:FAMILY POLICY, FAMILY FORMATION, DATABANK OF SOCIAL SECURITY, COMBINATION FAMILY AND BUSINESS LIFE
Disciplines:Psychological methods, Mathematical and quantitative methods, General pedagogical and educational sciences, Applied sociology, Demography, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology, Political theory and methodology