Joint Family and Work Trajectories and Multidimensional Wellbeing

C L Comolli,M Voorpostel,L Bernardi

doi:10.1007/s10680-021-09583-3

Abstract

Informed by the life course perspective, this paper investigates whether and how employment and family trajectories are jointly associated with subjective, relational and financial wellbeing later in life. We draw on data from the Swiss Household Panel which combines biographical retrospective information on work, partnership and childbearing trajectories with 19 annual waves containing a number of wellbeing indicators as well as detailed socio-demographic and social origin information. We use sequence analysis to identify the main family and work trajectories for men and women aged 20–50 years old. We use OLS regression models to assess the association between those trajectories and their interdependency with wellbeing. Results reveal a joint association between work and family trajectories and wellbeing at older age, even net of social origin and pre-trajectory resources. For women, but not for men, the association is also not fully explained by proximate (current family and work status) determinants of wellbeing. Women’s stable full-time employment combined with traditional family trajectories yields a subjective wellbeing premium, whereas childlessness and absence of a stable partnership over the life course is associated with lower levels of financial and subjective wellbeing after 50 especially in combination with a trajectory of weak labour market involvement. Relational wellbeing is not associated with employment trajectories, and only weakly linked to family trajectories among men.

Highlights

In the last decades in contemporary societies, both employment and family trajectories have become more diverse and uncertain (Diewald et al, 2006)
Family trajectories characterized by early family formation and unstable partnership histories (Demey et al, 2014; Peters & Liefbroer, 1997; Zimmermann & Hameister, 2019) and work trajectories characterized by non-employment (Falkingham et al, 2020; Ponomarenko, 2016) tend to be associated with lower wellbeing later in life, compared with delayed family formation and a strong attachment to the labour market
This might be a result of the younger cohorts included in the sample for these robustness checks analyses, but it seems that securing a stable career before starting a family is for Swiss men associated with higher subjective wellbeing later on

Summary

Introduction

In the last decades in contemporary societies, both employment and family trajectories have become more diverse and uncertain (Diewald et al, 2006). Family trajectories characterized by early family formation and unstable partnership histories (Demey et al, 2014; Peters & Liefbroer, 1997; Zimmermann & Hameister, 2019) and work trajectories characterized by non-employment (Falkingham et al, 2020; Ponomarenko, 2016) tend to be associated with lower wellbeing later in life, compared with delayed family formation and a strong attachment to the labour market. Trajectories characterized by (multiple) union dissolutions and absence of a partner tend to be linked to lower affective, subjective and social wellbeing (Demey et al, 2014; Zimmermann & Hameister, 2019) and lower economic wellbeing (Aassve, Betti et al, 2007; Halper-Manners et al, 2015). Early family formation tends to be linked to lower educational attainment, lower likelihood of full-time employment and lower subjective wellbeing compared with a delayed family formation (Schoon et al, 2012)

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