We document the individualization of wealth in France between 1998 and 2015, using precise survey data on the property titles of assets. It is characterized by an increase in the share of wealth which is individualized by spouses (vs. jointly owned) and by an increase in the share of wealth held by singles. We show that the usual measures of wealth inequality, which allocate the same share of household wealth to each spouse or partner, overestimate the share of wealth held by women. This results in an underestimation of both the level and the growth of a) wealth inequality between individuals and b) the gender wealth gap. We argue for better consideration of the ownership status and intra-household distribution of wealth in the measurement of wealth inequality.

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The spread of COVID-19 and resulting local and national lockdowns have a host of potential consequences for demographic trends. While impacts on mortality and, to some extent, short-term migration flows are beginning to be documented, it is too early to measure actual consequences for family demography. To gain insight into potential future consequences of the lockdown for family demography, we use cross-national Google Trends search data to explore whether trends in searches for words related to fertility, relationship formation, and relationship dissolution changed following lockdowns compared to average, pre-lockdown levels in Europe and the United States. Because lockdowns were not widely anticipated or simultaneous in timing or intensity, we exploit variability over time and between countries (and U.S. states). We use a panel event-study design and difference-in-differences methods, and account for seasonal trends and average country-level (or state-level) differences in searches. We find statistically significant impacts of lockdown timing on changes in searches for terms such as wedding and those related to condom use, emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and abortion, but little evidence of changes in searches related to fertility. Impacts for union formation and dissolution tended to only be statistically significant at the start of a lockdown with a return to average-levels about 2 to 3 months after lockdown initiation, particularly in Europe. Compared to Europe, returns to average search levels were less evident for the U.S., even 2 to 3 months after lockdowns were introduced. This may be due to the fact, in the U.S., health and social policy responses were less demarcated than in Europe, such that economic uncertainty was likely of larger magnitude. Such pandemic-related economic uncertainty may therefore have the potential to slightly increase already existing polarization in family formation behaviours in the U.S. Alongside contributing to the wider literature on economic uncertainty and family behaviors, this paper also proposes strategies for efficient use of Google Trends data, such as making relative comparisons and testing sensitivity to outliers, and provides a template and cautions for their use in demographic research when actual demographic trends data are not yet available.

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A large literature has documented the impact of parental separation on children's financial poverty. However, income has been increasingly criticized as an indicator of childhood living conditions and deprivation. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework and adapt existing measures of adult multi-domain deprivation to produce childhood deprivation indicators that are age-specific and child-centred. These new indicators allow within-individual, longitudinal analyses to measure the impact of a shock on childrens living conditions. We apply this method to consider the long term effects of parental separation on childhood deprivation, considering four dimensions of children's lives: leisure; material conditions; parenting behaviours and routines; and basic material goods. We track children over the first decade of life by using a nationally representative UK cohort of over 18,000 children. Using a fixed-effects framework, we find that, while the increase in income poverty after parental separation is large, the impact on childhood deprivation was more mixed. Our results suggest that, while facing strong financial constraints, separated parents cut back on normative but costly activities such as holidays and outings, but attempt to maintain children's basic material circumstances and their day-today parenting and routines, at least around separation. However, heterogeneous effects exist, suggesting that parents' pre-separation social and economic capital may play an important role. This approach therefore adds more precision and nuance to our understanding of the processes around parental separation and its impacts on children. Keywords child poverty • deprivation indicators • family instability • longitudinal methods • United Kingdom

This paper examines wealth accumulation among couple-headed households and investigates changes in within-household inequality over time and across couple statuses. Going beyond previous research that mostly studies wealth accumulation within marriages by comparing married with unmarried individuals, we consider the legal statuses of couples (cohabitation, civil union, and marriage) and property regimes (community and separate property). We apply multivariate regression analysis to high-quality longitudinal data from the French wealth survey (2015–2018) and find no differences in net worth accumulation between couples’ legal statuses when property regimes are not accounted for. However, couples with a separate property regime accumulate more wealth than couples with a community property regime, and married couples with a separate property regime drive this association. Our results show that the gender wealth gap is larger for couples with a separate property regime, but it is partially compensated by accumulated wealth. Our results highlight the importance of legal statuses and property regimes in explaining the dynamics of between- and within-household inequality in France, specifically within a context of increasingly diversified marital trajectories.

Utiliser le revenu pour mesurer les conditions de vie des enfants est de plus en plus critiqué, en particulier pour les très jeunes enfants. Cet article propose une description multidimensionnelle de la pauvreté des enfants en France, au moment de leur naissance et pendant leur première année de vie, en utilisant une mesure de la pauvreté monétaire et une approche de la pauvreté en conditions de vie, à partir de l’Étude longitudinale française depuis l’enfance (la cohorte Elfe) qui est une enquête nationale représentative portant sur plus de dix-huit mille enfants nés en France en 2011. Les résultats montrent que la pauvreté monétaire ne coïncide pas toujours avec la pauvreté en conditions de vie : certains enfants vivent dans des ménages à faibles revenus sans pour autant être considérés comme pauvres tandis que d’autres dont les revenus sont plus élevés peuvent néanmoins être considérés comme pauvres au regard des conditions de vie. Cette approche permet d’être plus précis et plus nuancé dans la compréhension de la pauvreté des enfants à de très jeunes âges.