PopDigests

In a new study, Alice Goisis and Maria Palma (Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Social Research Institute, UCL) looked at parent-child relationships of individuals around the age of 14 in the UK by exploring data from the Millennium Cohort Study and analysed relationships with both mothers and fathers. Their results suggest that differences between the MAR and NC families in terms of closeness and frequency of quarrelling are small, and generally not statistically significant. However, they did find statistically significant differences on the specific indicator of closeness.

Lajos Balint (Hungarian Demographic Research Institute & University of Pécs), Katalin Fuzer (University of Pécs), Xenia Gonda and Péter Döme (Semmelweis University & Nyiro Gyula National Institute of Psychiatry and Addictions) assessed the contribution of changes in socio-demographic factors in the decrease of the suicide rate in Hungary.

The transition to retirement has become increasingly diverse: some retirees leave the workforce entirely, while others continue to work. Olga Grünwald (Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG)), Marleen Damman (Radboud University & NIDI), and Kène Henkens (NIDI, UMCG & University of Amsterdam) examined how different retirement processes shape engagement in unpaid productive activities.

Comolli (University of Lausanne) and colleagues investigated the potential influence of economic recessions on total fertility rate in Nordic countries. They looked at the fertility histories and childbearing risk of native-born women in these countries between the late 1980s to mid-2010s.

Kathrin Morosow (University of Bath), Marika Jalovaara (University of Turku) and Juho Härkönen (European University Institute & Stockholm University) studied the impact of cash-for-care benefits on short- and long-term risks of parental separation in Finland.

Ariane Bertogg (University of Konstanz), Tiziana Nazio (WZB Berlin Social Science Center & University of Torino) and Susanne Strauß (University of Konstanz) use data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and find that providing regular care to parents or parents-in-law is not associated with a higher likelihood of exiting the labour market.

Using Pairfam data, Mirkka Danielsbacka (University of Turku), Antti O. Tanskanen (University of Turku) and Francesco Billari (Bocconi University) looked into whether meeting a partner online associated with different family-related outcomes than of those of who meet offline.

A study by Melissa Bohnert and Pablo Gracia (Trinity College Dublin) asks whether engagement with digital media has been detrimental for the well-being of children, and whether the effects are the same for all children. They find that digital engagement can have moderate negative effects on children’s mental health and socioemotional problems, but these effects were found to vary largely depending on the quantity and quality of these digital activities.

Nico Stawarz and Nikola Sander (German Federal Institute for Population Research, BiB) use data on migration flows between 401 counties for the period 1991 to 2017 to study the impact of migration on regional population change since German Reunification.

Using data from the European EQUAL project on migrants in the southern Italian region of Calabria, Cremaschi and Devillanova (Bocconi University) found that having a higher number of personal contacts increases chances of obtaining regular legal status; native and/or family contacts were associated with a much greater effect.