Maternal Education, Divorce, and Changes in Economic Resources: Evidence from Germany

Leopold, Liliya; Leopold, Thomas

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2778090

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(80 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This may further exacerbate preexisting inequalities in mental health for low-SES groups. Leopold and Leopold [23], however, demonstrated that divorce is not as consequential for women with lower education as for those with higher levels of educational attainment in younger age groups, because the latter group may have more to lose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marital Transitions and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults: Examining Educational Differences

Recksiedler

Stawski

2018

Gerontology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Later decades of the life course have undergone rapid transformations due to demographic changes in ageing societies, such as more frequent occurrences of later-life marital transitions. Adaption to these transitions, even when welcomed, brings novel chances and challenges in negotiating new social roles in old age, which could reinforce preexisting disparities in the acquisition and mastery of resources, social ties, and coping strategies. Objectives: Because the ability to weather later-life marital transitions may depend on the long arm of education acquired earlier in the life course, the present study aims to identify and track trends in the prevalence of marriage, divorce/separation, and widowhood among sociodemographic subgroups; link the occurrence of those transitions with mental health; and test the influence of educational attainment on these associations. Methods: We employ an intraindividual, within-person approach to quantify the occurrence of marital transitions and their impact using data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 22,013; 1992–2010). Measures of transition occurrence, depressive symptoms, and educational attainment were available across up to 10 biennial assessments. Results: Individuals with less than a high school diploma displayed the highest likelihood of losing their significant other through divorce/separation or death. Marital loss was associated with increasing, and marital gain with decreasing, depressive symptoms. Compared to those with less than a high school diploma, individuals with a high school or general equivalency diploma exhibited larger increases in depressive symptoms associated with widowhood, even though their average levels of depressive symptoms were lower in the absence of this transition. Conclusions: Our findings revealed a predictable educational gradient for the occurrence of marital transitions and later-life mental health. Yet higher, formalized education did not protect the participants from increased depression in the presence of a loss-related transition, which could suggest that the strains of spousal loss may to some degree function as a leveler of the preexisting social inequalities of stratified life courses. We conclude that the benefits conferred by education are not necessarily ubiquitous, and its impact on the adaptation to spousal loss may be more complex and nuanced depending on the range of prior experiences and available coping strategies.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marital Transitions and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults: Examining Educational Differences

Recksiedler

Stawski

2018

Gerontology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This expectation was not confirmed in our models. It could be the case that experiencing such fundamental changes in social roles and the reconfiguration of relationships between family members after a divorce or separation (Amato 2010;Bengtson and Allen 2009) may have the effect of 'leveling' or reducing social differentiation between parents (Leopold and Leopold 2016). Or, in other words, union dissolution itself may leave a more permanent mark on or represent a "turning point" for all families, regardless of prior SES or subsequently chosen custody arrangement, which would explain the lack of differences between the custody arrangements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are “Part-Time Parents” Healthier and Happier Parents? Correlates of Shared Physical Custody in Switzerland

Recksiedler

Bernardi

2021

European Studies of Population

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Changing legal and parental practices across Europe led to a higher share of parents practicing shared physical custody (SPC) upon separation, who tended to be more affluent and less conflict-ridden. Since SPC became more prevalent, profiles of SPC parents pluralized. Far from these developments, no clearly defined legal pathways toward SPC existed in Switzerland before 2017. Profiling the Swiss case, we examine the prevalence of SPC families, and its associations with parental health and well-being before these legislative changes. Among 875 separated parents of 1,269 minors, SPC (i.e., child alternates between parental homes at least 30% of the time) was practiced by about 11% of the sample. A higher share of SPC parents was highly-educated, yet more financially strained compared to other parents. Although no overall differences in health and well-being emerged between SPC and other separated parents (e.g., with sole custody), SPC-health-linkages varied by gender and education. We conclude that lacking institutional support for SPC and gender-biased employment practices reinforce traditional custody models. Because of costly childcare and more skewed time splits among Swiss SPC parents, SPC may represent more of a resource drain—at least economically—than a relief for the parent shouldering more care duties and expenses.

show abstract

“…In summary, previous empirical evidence shows that the differential effect of family type on child well-being according to the educational attainment of parents seems to be influenced by multiple factors such as, for example, the indicator of well-being under analysis or the country being studied (Bernardi & Boertien, 2017;Garriga & Berta, 2018;Grätz, 2015;Mandemakers & Kalmijn, 2014). In this sense, in countries where there is greater protection against poverty and precarity, single parenthood may not have a big impact on the economic situation of families with less educational attainment (Garriga & Berta, 2018;Leopold & Leopold, 2016). In consequence, in order to better understand the effect of educational gradient on child inequality, more empirical evidence and indicators that analyse different contexts must be taken into account.…”

Section: Interpretative and Hypothetical Modelmentioning

confidence: 95%

Single-Parent Families, Educational Gradient, and Child Deprivation: The Cases of Italy and Spain

Pérez-Corral

Mínguez

2022

Child Ind Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This work examines whether the increase of single parenthood in Italy and Spain, specifically amongst women in an unfavourable socioeconomic position, has repercussions for child well-being, understood here as material deprivation. In particular, our main objective is to analyse the possible differential impact of single parenthood on children’s material deprivation in relation to mothers’ level of education. Using the 2014 EU-SILC Module on material deprivation, we identify five areas of child deprivation based on the EU-MODA approach: nutrition, clothing, education, leisure, and social life. In the case of Italy, our main results indicate that, compared to children from two-parent households, children of single mothers with a low level of education have a higher risk of nutrition and clothing deprivation. In Spain, living in a single-parent household is associated with a higher risk of deprivation in terms of social life for those children whose mothers do not have a high level of education. Therefore, the findings suggest that in both countries the growth of single parenthood amongst women with a lower educational level may have an impact on child well-being inequality. This article contributes empirical data to the growing literature on the rise of child poverty in Southern European countries.

show abstract

Maternal Education, Divorce, and Changes in Economic Resources: Evidence from Germany

Cited by 7 publications

References 44 publications

Marital Transitions and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults: Examining Educational Differences

Marital Transitions and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults: Examining Educational Differences

Are “Part-Time Parents” Healthier and Happier Parents? Correlates of Shared Physical Custody in Switzerland

Single-Parent Families, Educational Gradient, and Child Deprivation: The Cases of Italy and Spain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About