Abstract
The diversity of early family life courses is thought to have increased, although empirical evidence is mixed. Less standardized family formation is attributed to compositional changes in educational attainment, labour market participation, and childhood living conditions. I investigate whether and why family trajectories have become more or less standardized across birth cohorts in Sweden. I combine sequence metrics with Oaxaca–Blinder decompositions to assess the compositional shifts that drive changes in family formation standardization. Family trajectories of individuals born in 1952, 1962, and 1972 from age 18 to 35 are reconstructed using Swedish register data. My results demonstrate that early family formation has become more standardized across birth cohorts. Further, compositional differences between birth cohorts partially account for this standardization, especially for women. For example, higher levels of educational attainment are associated with family formation standardization. This substantiates arguments that family formation may re-standardize following the second demographic transition.
Highlights
Many scholars have claimed that early family life courses have become more diverse across European societies starting in the mid-twentieth century
This study aims to assess whether family life courses have become more or less standardized and to ascertain which compositional shifts are associated with these changes
Relative frequency plots are generated in five steps: (1) sequences are sorted by a chosen criterion, (2) the sorted sample is divided into subgroups, (3) a medoid sequence, i.e. the most representative sequence, is extracted from each subgroup, (4) the medoid sequences are plotted as index plots, and (5) the dissimilarity of sequences to the medoid within each subgroup are displayed as boxplots the medoids
Summary
Many scholars have claimed that early family life courses have become more diverse across European societies starting in the mid-twentieth century (see Buchmann and Kriesi 2011). It is important to study family life course de-standardization, because increasing diversity may have serious consequences for individuals and societies (see Zimmermann and Konietzka 2017 for a discussion). High life course diversity that is generated by nonmarital parenthood, serial cohabitation, and divorce is likely tightly intertwined with the production of social inequalities and their reproduction across generations More diverse family life courses are associated with increasing unpredictability, which may affect individuals’ ability to plan their lives, e.g. when to enter parenthood. De-standardization poses challenges to social policies that aim to maintain the economic and subjective well-being of individuals with increasingly distinct family trajectories
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