Abstract
Previous research on the impact of parental loss on labor market outcomes in adulthood has often suffered from low sample sizes. To generate further insights into the long-term consequences of parental death, I use the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN). The HSN contains occupational information on life courses of a sample of more than 8,000 males and almost 7,000 females born between 1850 and 1922, a period of important labor market transformations. Roughly 20 % of the sample population experienced parental death before age 16. Linear regression models show that maternal loss is significantly associated with lower occupational position in adulthood for both men and women, which points to the crucial importance of maternal care in childhood for socioeconomic outcomes in later life. This interpretation is supported by the finding that a stepmother’s entry into the family is positively related with sons’ occupational position later in life. In contrast to expectations, the loss of economic resources related to the father’s death is generally not associated with lower status attainment in adulthood for men or for women. The results indicate, however, that the negative consequences of paternal death on men’s socioeconomic outcomes decreased over time, illustrating the complex interaction between individual life courses and surrounding labor market transformations.
Highlights
Parental death is one of the most traumatic events that can occur in childhood and may influence an affected individual’s life course in many ways
Concerning the occupational position of sons in young adulthood, the mean values indicate that both paternal death and maternal death are significantly associated with a 1 point lower HISCAM score
Having shown that parental death is significantly associated with lower status attainment for males but not for females, I examine more closely the roles of the sex of the deceased parent and the sex of the stepparent, the child’s age at bereavement, and the effect of parental death over time
Summary
Parental death is one of the most traumatic events that can occur in childhood and may influence an affected individual’s life course in many ways. I follow many more research persons born all over the Netherlands, examine the marriage mobility of parentally bereaved daughters by comparing their husband’s and father’s occupational position, and consider the effect of maternal death.
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