British Household Panel Study Research Articles

Why do women develop lower levels of political interest? Examining the influence of education, family socialisation and adult roles

AbstractThe political interest of men rises faster than that of women during late adolescence and early adulthood in Britain (Fraile and Sánchez-Vítores in Polit Psychol 41(1):89–106, 2020). This paper analyses whether factors relating to education, the assumption of adult roles and family background can explain this growing disparity. We use panel data of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and Understanding Society (USoc) to examine these factors. Education turns out to be the only factor that is related to different growth trajectories of political interest between men and women. Women with lower levels of education or vocational qualifications show stable or declining levels of political interest while all other categories show rising levels of interest between ages 16 and 30. Education can, however, only partially account for the rising gender gap. Variables representing the attainment of adult roles, such as occupational status, marital status and household composition, and variables capturing family socialisation are not linked to the growing disparity of political interest between men and women. Most of this gap thus remains unexplained.

Wage outcomes after temporary employment in Germany and the UK: Taking within- and between-employer transitions into account

This study investigates wage outcomes of former temporary workers by distinguishing workers obtaining permanent jobs with the same employer from those who find permanent work with a new employer. With this distinction, we build on studies investigating the wage consequences of temporary jobs, which have thus far mainly focused on cross-sectional wage gaps and longer-term wage consequences without considering employer changes. We compare Germany and the UK as two prime examples of different labour market settings and look at labour market subgroups relevant for social stratification. We estimate fixed effects individual slopes regression with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1995–2021), the British Household Panel Study (1992–2008), and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2010–2021). Results show that in the rigid German and in the more flexible UK labour market, wage increase of former temporary workers is larger if the permanent job is obtained with the same employer, but only if it coincides with a job change within the firm. For transitions occurring on the same job, only workers in Germany experience wage increase. This wage increase is not higher compared to the wage increase of workers who switch employers. These patterns are similar across subgroups, with the largest deviances found for older workers in Germany.

The Gendered Impacts of Partnership and Parenthood on Paid Work and Unpaid Work Time in Great Britain, 1992–2019

AbstractUsing data from the British Household Panel Study and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (1992–2019), this study investigates the impacts of partnership and parenthood on women's and men's paid work and unpaid work time and how these impacts have changed in the last three decades in Great Britain. We applied two fixed‐effect models—one conventional, one novel—with individual constants and slopes to account for the selection and longitudinal changes in time use. We found that the gender‐traditionalizing effect of partnership on the use of time has weakened over the years. Marriage did not affect women's and men's paid work time, and since the 2010s, marriage no longer affect women's and men's time spent on housework differently. However, motherhood continues to reduce women's paid work time substantially, and the extent of this impact has remained unchanged over the previous three decades. Partnership and parenthood have resulted in minor changes to men's paid work and unpaid work time; the extent of their effects has likewise remained modest over the previous three decades. Our findings suggest that in Britain, the gender revolution of the division of labor among parents has stalled, and family policies have not successfully increased mothers’ paid work time and fathers’ unpaid work time.

Parents’ life satisfaction prior to and following preterm birth

The current study tested whether the reported lower wellbeing of parents after preterm birth, relative to term birth, is a continuation of a pre-existing difference before pregnancy. Parents from Germany (the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, N = 10,649) and the United Kingdom (British Household Panel Study and Understanding Society, N = 11,012) reported their new-born’s birthweight and gestational age, subsequently categorised as very preterm or very low birthweight (VP/VLBW, < 32 weeks or < 1500 g), moderately/late preterm or low birthweight (MLP/LBW, ≥ 32 weeks and < 37 weeks/≥ 1500 g and < 2500 g), or term-born (≥ 37 weeks and ≥ 2500 g). Mixed models were used to analyse life satisfaction, an aspect of wellbeing, at four assessments-two years and six months before birth and six months and two years afterwards. Two years before birth, satisfaction of prospective term-born, MLP/LBW, or VP/VLBW mothers did not significantly differ. However, mothers of VP/VLBWs had lower satisfaction relative to mothers of term-borns at both assessments post-birth. Among fathers, satisfaction levels were similarly equivalent two years before birth. Subsequently, fathers of VP/VLBWs temporarily differed in satisfaction six months post-birth relative to fathers of term-borns. Results indicate that parents’ lower life satisfaction after VP/VLBW birth is not a continuation of pre-existing life satisfaction differences.

Getting a foot in the door: local labour markets and the school-to-work transition

ABSTRACT Despite persistent sub-national variation in youth unemployment rates, the relationship between local labour market conditions and youth labour market outcomes is not well understood. This article explores the consequences of variation in the level and type of demand for labour for the amount of time it takes young people in the United Kingdom to find employment, following departure from full-time education. Survival analysis of British Household Panel Study (BHPS) data covering the period 1998–2008 shows that variation in the level (but not the type) of demand for labour is associated with considerable heterogeneity in job search time among less qualified young people, but not their better qualified peers. On average, it takes young people with lower secondary qualifications 1 month longer to find employment of any sort and 7 months longer to find secure, full-time employment if they are located in a place of low rather than high labour demand. These findings, which highlight the contextual nature of the risk associated with low educational attainment, point to the need for greater policy focus on bridging spatial mismatch between the location of low qualified young people and the location of secure employment opportunities.

Labour Mobility and Earnings in the Uk, 1992–2017

Abstract We combine information from the British Household Panel Study and the United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study (also known as Understanding Society) to construct consistent time series of aggregate worker stocks, worker flows and earnings in the United Kingdom over the period 1992–2017. We propose a method to harmonise data between the British Household Panel Study and United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study, which we validate by checking the consistency of some of our headline time series with equivalent series produced from other sources, notably by the Office for National Statistics. In addition to drawing a detailed aggregate picture of the United Kingdom labour market over the past two and a half decades, we use our constructed data set to compare the impact of industry, occupation and employer tenure on wages in the United Kingdom. We find that returns to occupation tenure are substantial. All else equal, five years of occupation tenure are associated with a 3.3% increase in wages. We also find that industry tenure plays a non-negligible part in driving wage growth.

Personality traits and dimensions of mental health

Individuals are different in a relatively constant pattern of thoughts, feeling, and behaviors, which are called personality traits. Mental health is a condition of well-being in which people may reach their full potential and deal effectively with stress, work efficiently, and contribute to their communities. Indeed, the link between personality and mental health as indicated by the 12-item version of the general health questionnaires (GHQ-12) has been well-established according to evidence found by decades of research. However, the GHQ-12 comprises many questions asking about different dimensions of mental health. It is unclear how personality traits relate to these dimensions of mental health. In this paper, we try to address this question. We analyzed data from 12,007 participants from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and generalized linear models. We replicated the factor structure of GHQ-12 labeled as GHQ-12A (social dysfunction & anhedonia; 6 items), GHQ-12B (depression & anxiety; 4 items), and GHQ-12C (loss of confidence; 2 items). Moreover, Neuroticism was positively related to all dimensions of mental health issues, Extraversion was negatively related to GHQ-12A (social dysfunction & anhedonia) and GHQ-12B (depression & anxiety), Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were negatively related to GHQ-12A (social dysfunction & anhedonia) and GHQ-12C (loss of confidence), and Openness was negatively related to GHQ-12B (depression & anxiety). These results contribute to theories including the predisposition/vulnerability model, complication/scar model, pathoplasty/exacerbation model, and the spectrum model, which propose that personality traits are linked to mental health and explained possible reasons. Psychologists may use results from this study to identify individuals who may be at high risk of developing various non-psychiatric mental health issues and intervene to avoid negative outcomes.

Demystifying the link between higher education and liberal values: A within-sibship analysis of British individuals' attitudes from 1994-2020.

The link between university graduation and liberal values is well-established and often taken as evidence that higher education participation causes attitudinal change. Identification of education's causal influence in shaping individual preferences is notoriously difficult as it necessitates isolating education's effect from self-selection mechanisms. This study exploits the household structure of the Harmonized British Household Panel Study and Understanding Society data to tighten the bounds of causal inference in this area and ultimately, to provide a more robust estimate of the independent effect of university graduation on political attitudes. Results demonstrate that leveraging sibling fixed-effects to control for family-invariant pre-adult experiences reduces the size of higher education's effect on cultural attitudes by at least 70%, compared to conventional methods. Significantly, within-sibship models show that obtaining higher education qualifications only has a small direct causal effect on British individuals' adult attitudes, and that this effect is not always liberalizing. This has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between higher education and political values. Contrary to popular assumptions about education's liberalizing role, this study demonstrates that the education-political values linkage is largely spurious. It materializes predominately because those experiencing pre-adult environments conducive to the formation of particular values disproportionately enroll at universities.

Trade shocks and the nationalist backlash in political attitudes: panel data evidence from Great Britain

ABSTRACT This article leverages individual-level panel data on nationalist attitudes to contribute to the debate on the (economic) roots of popular opposition to globalization. We propose a ‘nationalist backlash’ hypothesis: Individuals living in regions suffering from stronger import competition form more nationalist attitudes as part of a broad counter-reaction to globalization. Analyzing data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS), we document not only a decrease in support for EU membership but also a general shift towards more nationalist attitudes among respondents from regions exposed to higher imports from low-wage countries—in particular, China. We thus uncover a direct individual-level response to import shocks in the form of rising nationalist attitudes that helps to explain these shocks’ aggregate electoral consequences in terms of increased vote shares for the radical right.

Mental distress among young adults in Great Britain: long-term trends and early changes during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeIn Great Britain, few studies documented mental health trends in young adults in the years preceding 2020, the mental health dimensions affected, and how these compare with changes observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsLong-term trends in mental health among 16–34 year old men and women between 1991 and 2018, and changes between 2018–19 and July–September 2020 were examined using all waves from the British Household Panel Study (1991–2008), the UK Household Longitudinal Study (2009–20), and the first five UKHLS COVID-19 waves administered in April, May, June, July, and September 2020. Findings are based on the GHQ-12 continuous score (0–36), clinically significant cases (4 + /12) and severe cases (7 + /12) for mental distress, and item endorsements.ResultsBetween 1991 and 2018, the prevalence of cases (4 + /12) increased from 14–22% to 19–32% across groups. Increases were largest in women aged 16–24. In April 2020, the risk of caseness (4 + /12) increased across groups by 55% to 80% compared to the 2018–19 baseline. This increase, however, rapidly diminished over time: in July–September 2020, there was only a higher risk of caseness (4 + /12) in men aged 25–34 (prevalence ratio = 1.29, 95% CI 1.01–1.65) compared to the 2018–19 baseline.ConclusionWhereas distress surged in April 2020, its return to pre-pandemic levels by September 2020 highlights the nuanced impact that the pandemic may have over time. Given the magnitude of the decline in mental health over the past decade, attention must be given to young adults once the pandemic ends.

The Changing Impact of Family Background on Political Engagement During Adolescence and Early Adulthood

Abstract This paper examines the development of the impact of family background on young people’s political engagement during adolescence and early adulthood in order to test a number of hypotheses derived from the impressionable years and family socialization perspectives. The study analyses data of the British Household Panel Study and Understanding Society to assess these hypotheses. Political interest and voting intentions are used as outcomes of political engagement. The study finds parental education to have no effect on initial levels of these outcomes at age 11 but to be positively related to the change in these outcomes between ages 11 and 15. This indicates that the effect of parental education becomes stronger over time and that social disparities in political engagement are widening significantly during early adolescence. In contrast, parental political engagement is positively related to initial levels of voting intentions at age 11 but not related to the change in voting intentions between ages 11 and 15, which supports the hypothesis drawn from the family socialization perspective. Neither parental education nor parental political engagement are related to post-16 changes in political engagement. These results point to early adolescence as a crucial period for the manifestation of social inequalities in political engagement. They provisionally suggest that the influence of parental education runs through educational conditions in lower secondary and that these conditions could play an important role in amplifying the said inequalities.

Welfare within Families beyond Households: Intergenerational Exchanges of Practical and Financial Support in the UK

Families extend well beyond households. In particular, connections between parents and their adult offspring are often close and sustained, and transfers may include financial assistance, practical support, or both, provided by either generation to the other. Yet this major engine of welfare production, distribution, and redistribution has only recently become the focus of research. Who are the beneficiaries and to what extent are the patterns of exchange socially stratified? This article discusses findings from a programme of research analysing data from two nationally representative longitudinal studies, the British Household Panel Study and its successor Understanding Society, which record help given by, and received by, respondents through exchanges with their non-coresident parents and offspring in the UK. Some families exhibit a high tendency to provide mutual support between generations; these tendencies persist over time. Financial and practical support are generally complementary rather than substitutes. Longer travel time between parents and their offspring makes the provision of practical help less likely, whilst social class, social mobility, and ethnicity exhibit complex patterns of association with intergenerational exchanges. The resulting conclusion is that exchanges within families are an important complement to formal welfare institutions in the UK and that social policies should be designed to work with the grain of existing patterns of exchange, enabling family members to continue to provide help to one another, but ensuring that those who are less well supported by intergenerational assistance can access effective social protection.

Social construction of house size expectations: testing the positional good theory and aspiration spiral theory using UK and German panel data

ABSTRACT This paper examines the social construction of house size expectations in two national panel datasets: German Socio Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) and the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). More specifically, it tests the aspiration spiral theory and positional good theory using data on housing/life satisfaction and house size judgements. In both countries, it finds substantial evidence that the current space expectations of individuals who have ‘upsized’ depends on the level of living space they experienced in the past year. For downsizers, however, the evidence in support of the aspiration spiral theory is weaker. In terms of the positional good theory, this paper finds no consistent evidence that an individual’s space expectations are influenced by those around them. In both countries, the paper tests for two reference groups – the average level of living space in the region, and the mean size of the largest decile of houses in the region – and neither are found to be significant.

The economic benefits of volunteering and social class

A theory that the economic benefits of volunteering are contingent on social class (as defined by similarities in labour market situation) is tested using seven waves of longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Study gathered between 1996 and 2008 and fixed-effects models. Volunteering has a positive effect on earnings, but it is confined to people in professional and managerial occupations. Employees in white and blue collar jobs do not benefit. The study suggests that inconsistent results from previous studies might be due to failure to consider occupational heterogeneity among volunteers.

A new family equilibrium? Changing dynamics between the gender division of labor and fertility in Great Britain, 1991–2017

Background: There has recently been a heated debate about the relationship between gender equality and fertility. The macro-level relationship between female labor force participation and fertility has changed from negative to positive. At the micro level, a traditional gender role setting between spouses is still largely considered to be conducive to fertility. Objective: How has the relationship between the couple-level gender division of labor and fertility changed over the last 26 years in Great Britain? Methods: Data is from the harmonized Understanding Society and the British Household Panel Study. We first identify different levels of traditionalism in the division of labor by using latent class analysis. We then employ couple-level fixed-effect logistic regressions to analyze the reciprocal relationship between the gender division of labor and fertility. Results: From 1991 to 2017, the positive, reciprocal association between the traditional division of labor and fertility has been significantly weakening over time. Couples are less likely to adopt the male-breadwinner model when they have more children, and couples who adopt the male-breadwinner model are no longer more likely to have a new child from 2009 onward. Contribution: We take both spouses’ market work and domestic work and their combinations into account to measure the gender division of labor. This measurement and the use of fixed-effect regressions enable a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of the micro-level relationship between the division of labor and fertility. The time-varying association between the gendered division of labor and fertility provides important evidence of a changing family equilibrium in Britain. Egalitarian gender roles within a family are no longer a barrier to fertility.

Gender-specific effects of commuting and relocation on a couple's social life

Background: This contribution analyzes gender-specific effects of long-distance commuting and residential relocation on the social integration of couples. Research on geographical mobility in the partnership context focused very much on gender differences of regional mobility with respect to labor market outcomes and economic success. The effects of regional mobility and their possibly gendered impact on social networks and the social integration of households have been understudied. However, one would expect that regional mobility imposes severe temporal and geographical restrictions on the formation and upholding of social relationships. Moreover, these restrictions can be assumed to differ by gender due to differential involvement of women and men in market and domestic care work, which also present different opportunities and constraints for maintaining and forming social contacts. Objective: Against this background we analyze the effects of internal migration and job-related commuting on couples’ social relationships. Methods: The analysis is based on the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) waves 1997–2008. We first give extensive descriptive overview on the social structure of mobile couples and the amount and perceived quality of social contacts men and women maintain. Second the effects on quality (i.e., the satisfaction with one’s social life) are analyzed within a panel fixed-effects framework. Results: Results indicate that regional mobility affects women more than men. In particular women who move for her partner’s job prospects suffer losses in perceived quality of social life. Female commuters are dissatisfied if they have low qualification and are only weakly integrated in the labor market. Among male commuters time restrictions due to high workload are detrimental to their social life. Contribution: This contribution gives new insights on gender-specific dynamics of commuting and relocation and their gendered impact on social integration.

The Economic Benefits of Volunteering and Social Class

A theory that the economic benefits of volunteering are contingent on social class (as defined by similarities in labour market situation) is tested using seven waves of longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Study gathered between 1996 and 2008 and fixed-effects models. Volunteering has a positive effect on earnings, but it is confined to people in professional and managerial occupations. Employees in white and blue collar jobs do not benefit. The study suggests that inconsistent results from previous studies might be due to failure to consider occupational heterogeneity among volunteers.

Riding the Waves of Work and Life: Explaining Long-Term Experiences with Work Hour Mismatches

AbstractPaid work has become more precarious in the recent decades, prompting many conflicts between employers and employees, including struggles over work hours. To better understand these struggles, we provide the first examination of long-term experiences with work hour mismatches (i.e., gaps between the number of hours people prefer to work per week and the number of hours they actually work). Using sequence analysis and nearly two decades of data from the British Household Panel Study, we find heterogeneous but patterned experiences. Nearly everyone has an hour mismatch eventually (typically overemployment), and most people oscillate between having and not having hour mismatches. Existing theoretical accounts anticipate some hour mismatch sequences, but the data contradict several key predictions. Moreover, no account predicts the most dominant pattern: oscillating overemployment. We thus offer a new explanation, which proposes that hour mismatches usually come in waves but can be generated in different ways. Sometimes mismatches are caused by unstable work schedules. Other times, mismatches stem from inflexible work hours or job demands that intentionally or unintentionally prevent employees from altering their work hours to accommodate changing personal needs.

Core Political Values and the Long-Term Shaping of Partisanship

AbstractParty identification has been thought to provide the central organizing element for political belief systems. This article makes the contrasting case that core values concerning equality and government intervention versus individualism and free enterprise are fundamental orientations that can themselves shape partisanship. The authors evaluate these arguments in the British case using a validated multiple-item measure of core values, using ordered latent class models to estimate reciprocal effects with partisanship on panel data from the British Household Panel Study, 1991–2007. The findings demonstrate that core values are more stable than partisanship and have far stronger cross-lagged effects on partisanship than vice versa in both polarized and depolarized political contexts, for younger and older respondents, and for those with differing levels of educational attainment and income, thus demonstrating their general utility as decision-making heuristics.

The impact of long-term care on primary care doctor consultations for people over 75\xa0years

Many countries are adopting policies to create greater coordination and integration between acute and long-term care services. This policy is predicated on the assumption that these service areas have interdependent outcomes for patients. In this paper, we study the interdependencies between the long-term (home care) services and consultations with a primary care doctor, as used by people over 75 years. Starting with a model of individual’s demand for doctor consultations, given supply, we formalize the hypothesis that exogenous increases to home care supply will reduce the number of consultations where these services are technical substitutes. Furthermore, greater coordination of public service planning and use of pooled budgets could lead to better outcomes because planners can account for these externalities. We test our main hypothesis using data from the British Household Panel Study for 1991–2009. To address potential concerns about endogeneity, we use a set of instrumental variables for home care motivated by institutional features of the social care system. We find that there is a statistically significant substitution effect between home care and doctor visits, which is robust across a range of specifications. This result has implications for policies that consider increased coordination between health care and social care systems.