In a series of papers, William J. Goode argued that the relationship between modernization and the class composition of divorce is inverse. Starting from his hypothesis, we examine the relationship between female education and the risk of divorce over time in 17 countries. We expect that the relationship differs across countries and across time, so that women with higher education have a higher risk of divorce in countries and at times when the social and economic costs of divorce are high, and that there is no relationship or a negative relationship where these costs are lower. Using discrete-time event-history techniques on data on first marriages from the Fertility and Family Surveys (FFS), we find that women with higher education had a higher risk of divorce in France, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain. We do not find a relationship between education and divorce in Estonia, Finland, West-Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Sweden, and Switzerland, nor, depending on the model specification, in Flanders and Norway. In Austria, Lithuania, and the United States, the educational gradient of divorce is negative. Furthermore, as predicted by our hypotheses, the educational gradient becomes increasingly negative in Flanders, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, and the United States. We explore this variation across time and countries in more detail with multilevel models and direct measures on the legal, social, and economic environment of the countries. We find that the de-institutionalization of marriage and unconventional family practices are associated with a negative educational gradient of divorce, while welfare state expenditure is associated with a more positive gradient.

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’s implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic’s social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic’s short- and long-term consequences unfold.

Background Housing characteristics and neighbourhood context are considered risk factors for COVID-19 mortality among older adults. The aim of this study was to investigate how individual-level housing and neighbourhood characteristics are associated with COVID-19 mortality in older adults. Methods For this population-based, observational study, we used data from the cause-of-death register held by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare to identify recorded COVID-19 mortality and mortality from other causes among individuals (aged ≥70 years) in Stockholm county, Sweden, between March 12 and May 8, 2020. This information was linked to population-register data from December, 2019, including socioeconomic, demographic, and residential characteristics. We ran Cox proportional hazards regressions for the risk of dying from COVID-19 and from all other causes. The independent variables were area (m 2 ) per individual in the household, the age structure of the household, type of housing, confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the borough, and neighbourhood population density. All models were adjusted for individual age, sex, country of birth, income, and education. Findings Of 279 961 individuals identified to be aged 70 years or older on March 12, 2020, and residing in Stockholm in December, 2019, 274 712 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the study population. Between March 12 and May 8, 2020, 3386 deaths occurred, of which 1301 were reported as COVID-19 deaths. In fully adjusted models, household and neighbourhood characteristics were independently associated with COVID-19 mortality among older adults. Compared with living in a household with individuals aged 66 years or older, living with someone of working age (<66 years) was associated with increased COVID-19 mortality (hazard ratio 1·6; 95% CI 1·3–2·0). Living in a care home was associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 mortality (4·1; 3·5–4·9) compared with living in independent housing. Living in neighbourhoods with the highest population density (≥5000 individuals per km 2 ) was associated with higher COVID-19 mortality (1·7; 1·1–2·4) compared with living in the least densely populated neighbourhoods (0 to <150 individuals per km 2 ). Interpretation Close exposure to working-age household members and neighbours is associated with increased COVID-19 mortality among older adults. Similarly, living in a care home is associated with increased mortality, potentially through exposure to visitors and care workers, but also due to poor underlying health among care-home residents. These factors should be considered when developing strategies to protect this group. Funding Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE), Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Previous research has documented that children who do not live with both biological parents fare somewhat worse on a variety of outcomes than those who do. In this article, which is the introduction to the Special Issue on ''Family dynamics and children's well-being and life chances in Europe,'' we refine this picture by identifying variation in this conclusion depending on the family transitions and subpopulations studied. We start by discussing the general evidence accumulated for parental separation and ask whether the same picture emerges from research on other family transitions and structures. Subsequently, we review studies that have aimed to deal with endogeneity and discuss whether issues of causality challenge the general picture of family transitions lowering child well-being. Finally, we discuss whether previous evidence finds effects of family transitions on child outcomes to differ between children from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, and across countries and time-periods studied. Each of the subsequent articles in this Special Issue contributes to these issues. Population (2017) 33:163-184 DOI 10.1007 evidence on how several less often studied family forms relate to child outcomes in the European context. Two other articles in this Special Issue contribute by resolving several key questions in research on variation in the consequences of parental separation by socioeconomic and immigrant background, two areas of research that have produced conflicting results so far.Eur J