Did the election of Donald Trump affect the popularity of the European Union (EU) in Europe? Theoretically, both a positive rally effect (due to a perceived external threat) and a negative domino effect (due to resignation among Europhiles and/or reinforcement among europhobe nationalists) are plausible. We treat Trump’s unexpected victory as an external shock and use a Eurobarometer survey that was conducted in all EU-28 member states four days prior to (control group) and six days after the election (treatment group) as source material for a natural experiment. The analysis reveals that the election of Trump caused a significant increase in the EU’s popularity in Europe immediately after the election. This “Trump effect” is considerable in size, roughly equivalent to three years of education. Gains in popularity were particularly high among respondents who perceived their country as economically struggling and, surprisingly, among the political right, suggesting that Trump’s victory broadened and ideologically diversified the EU’s base of support.

During the past decades the importance of soft skills for labour market outcomes has grown substantially. This carries implications for labour market inequality, since previous research shows that soft skills are not valued equally across race and gender. This work explores the role of soft skills in job advertisements by drawing on methods from computational science as well as on theoretical and empirical insights from economics, sociology and psychology. We present a semi-automatic approach based on crowdsourcing and text mining for extracting a list of soft skills. We find that soft skills are a crucial component of job ads, especially of low-paid jobs and jobs in female-dominated professions. Our work shows that soft skills can serve as partial predictors of the gender composition in job categories and that not all soft skills receive equal wage returns at the labour market. Especially "female" skills are frequently associated with wage penalties. Our results expand the growing literature on the association of soft skills on wage inequality and highlight their importance for occupational gender segregation at labour markets.

Objective: The aim of this study is to extend our knowledge about uncertainty in fertility intentions from a life course perspective. We want to find out if life course markers such as economic circumstances, relationship status, family size, and the so-called “biological clock” (getting older) influence uncertainty in fertility intentions. Uncertainty in fertility intentions is the state in which individuals are not sure whether they will have (more) children. Background: Determining what drives uncertainty in fertility intentions may lead to a better understanding of fertility decision-making and its outcomes. Method: We use German panel data (German Family Panel, pairfam) for three birth cohorts (1971-73, 1981-83, 1991-93), and employ multinomial fixed-effects logit models as well as bivariate analyses based on waves 1 to 11. Results: Uncertainty in fertility intentions is volatile across an individual’s life course, serving as a transitional phase between certainly intending and not intending to have any (more) children. Approaching the end of the reproductive life span (getting older), separating from a partner, having two or more children, and, for men, subjective economic fears increase the odds of being uncertain. Conclusion: By showing that uncertainty in fertility intentions is a volatile concept and that relevant life course markers shape this volatility, we provide new insights into the process of fertility decision-making.

While research on the gender pay gap (GPG) is growing, there is little evidence on the stability or convergence of GPGs against the backdrop of sudden historical changes. Taking advantage of German reunification, after which western male-breadwinner policies were superimposed on the hitherto gender egalitarian East, we illuminate this research gap. Using decompositions on the Socio-economic Panel, we examine how historically grown gender arrangements influence the GPG in eastern and western Germany 1990–2013. We find support for the concept of a stalled gender revolution and a continued influence of pre-unification gender arrangements on the German GPG.

Before the pandemic, many employers were hesitant to offer their employees the option of working from home. However, remote working has been widely adopted during the pandemic as one of the key methods of controlling the spread of the virus. The measure encountered a widespread acceptance and it is likely that the demand for work from home as a flexible work arrangement will persist also after the pandemic has ended. Although numerous studies have addressed the role of remote work during this crisis, as of yet we lack thorough research jointly addressing the question on how occupations/job characteristics on the one hand and family/household responsibilities on the other are associated with the propensity of working from home, and how gender cuts across those aspects. Using the COVID-19 survey of the German Family Panel (pairfam), covering the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, together with information from pairfam panel waves conducted before the pandemic, as well as a special evaluation of the 2019 German Labor Force Survey, we are able to address this gap. Employing linear probability models on a sample of 1,414 men (N = 641) and women (N = 773), our results show that occupational traits, especially the gender composition of an occupation, are an important predictor for working from home. Women employed in female-dominated occupations are less often in a position to work from home. Furthermore, our study confirms that it is particularly the highly educated, as well as those who work in high-prestige occupations, who are able to work from home. Family configurations and care obligations are less influential upon the transition to homeworking, even in times of an unprecedented situation of school and daycare closures and increased parental responsibilities for children’s (early) education.

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longitudinal analysis of Latin Americans' support for their continent's economic and political integration. Using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression, we reveal intra-and intersocietal trends and cleavages. Our results show that support rates are generally declining from high initial levels. Furthermore, while gender and educational gaps in public opinion remained stable over time, considerable shifts occurred with regard to political orientation: starting from the lowest initial values, the left surpassed the right-and, at least in the case of support for political integration, also the center-to become the political wing favoring integration most highly. This finding shows, contrary to prevailing ideas, that the political center is not necessarily the primary supporter of integration. When regionalism is increasingly driven by left-wing governments, public support for regional integration may also swing to the left.Coincidiendo con el desplazamiento hacia la izquierda de la política latinoamericana, la integración regional en América Latina se ha acelerado durante las dos últimas décadas. Sin embargo, mientras que el apoyo a la integración europea ha sido estudiado sistemáticamente durante décadas, todavía no existen análisis referidos a las tendencias de la opinión pública con respecto a la integración de América Latina. Este artículo, al combinar los datos de ocho encuestas de Latinobarómetro realizadas a 106,590 encuestados de 17 países de América del Sur y América Central, proporciona el primer análisis longitudinal referido al apoyo por parte de los latinoamericanos a la integración política y económica del continente. Utilizando una regresión logística de efectos mixtos multinivel, revelamos tendencias y escisiones internas e inter-sociales. Nuestros resultados muestran que si bien existía un alto nivel inicial de apoyo, en general, este porcentaje está disminuyendo. Es más, si bien las brechas educacionales y de género se han mantenido estables a lo largo del tiempo en el ámbito de la opinión pública, se han producido cambios considerables respecto de la orientación política: en un comienzo con valores iniciales más bajos, la izquierda superó a la derecha y -al menos en el caso del apoyo a la integración política-también al centro para convertirse en el ala política que más propiciaba la integración. Este hallazgo demuestra, contrariamente a las ideas dominantes, que el centro político no es necesariamente el principal partidario de la integración. Cuando el regionalismo se ve cada vez más impulsado por los gobiernos de izquierda, el apoyo público a la integración regional también puede oscilar hacia la izquierda.Ever since Simón Bolívar envisioned a Latin American confederation, as famously described in his Carta de Jamaica (1815), the economic, political, and societal unification of Latin America has been a recurrent theme in public debates on the continent. Over the past few decades, countries in South and Central America have again come closer to realizing such a union, as they entered deep...

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