Event History Analysis Research Articles

Retirement in Western Germany – How Workplace Tasks Influence Its Timing

In this article, task data from the German Qualification and Career Survey (BIBB/IAB) is matched against the Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) to investigate what patterns are discernible in retirement between 1985 and 2005 in Western Germany. Set against a background of pension reforms and substantial structural change, the article asks whether the nature of occupational tasks has any significant effect on the timing of retirement. Through the use of event history analysis, the article reveals that having a large percentage of routine manual tasks in one’s job is associated with a greater likelihood of a job holder leaving employment, while having medium to high percentages of non-routine manual tasks in one’s job will tend to decrease that likelihood. There is also evidence that holding a job that includes a medium to high concentration of analytical and interactive tasks will tend to reduce the likelihood of early retirement.

Gender Differences in the Link Between Marital Status and the Risk of Cognitive Impairment: Results From the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging.

In the context of South Korea, characterized by increasing population aging and a changing family structure, this study examined differences in the risk of cognitive impairment by marital status and investigated whether this association differs by gender. The data were derived from the 2006-2018 Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging. The sample comprised 7,568 respondents aged 45 years or older, who contributed 30,414 person-year observations. Event history analysis was used to predict the odds of cognitive impairment by marital status and gender. Relative to their married counterparts, never-married and divorced people were the most disadvantaged in terms of cognitive health. In addition, the association between marital status and cognitive impairment was much stronger for men than for women. Further, gender-stratified analyses showed that, compared with married men, never-married men had a higher risk of cognitive impairment, but there were no significant effects of marital status for women.

It's a Long Way to the Top: Women's Ministerial Career Paths

AbstractMinisterial portfolios that promise high status, broad public visibility, and extensive financial and personnel resources continue to be men's domains. In this article, we shed light on gender inequality in ministerial selection processes by studying the duration from a minister's original appointment as a member of cabinet until he or she receives responsibility for a highly prestigious portfolio. We argue that the time it takes for ambitious politicians to prove themselves suitable for this type of cabinet position depends on their sex and the degree to which the policy area for which they are responsible reinforces stereotypical expectations about their personality traits. Empirical evidence from event history analysis of original data including detailed information on all ministerial careers in 27 European countries between 1990 to 2018 supports these propositions. These findings reveal that even highly qualified women politicians who are already members of the executive face additional barriers during their political careers.

Labour market uncertainty and the economic foundations of marriage in South Korea

ABSTRACT Using data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (1998–2014), this study examines how various indicators of socioeconomic status (SES) (i.e. education, employment status, occupation, and earnings) are associated with the transition to first marriage for South Korean men and women. Results from discrete-time event-history analysis show that all SES indicators are strongly associated with the timing of marriage for men and that there is a clear SES gradient for men's marriage entry. In addition, women with high SES (regular, white-collar jobs, and the highest earnings) are more likely to get married than those with lower SES. We also find that securing a regular job is a significant factor for marriage formation regardless of gender. These results indicate that among those with high SES in South Korea, the economic foundations of marriage appear to be characterised by the cooperation model.

Property Tax Foreclosure, Spatial Effects, and Neighborhood Racial Demographic Change: Examining Data From Detroit.

In recent decades, the city of Detroit has experienced the greatest population loss of any major American city. Applying Event History Analysis methodology to a large dataset containing information on all properties in Detroit between 2002 and 2013, I examine how Property Tax Foreclosure spatially perpetuated itself in Detroit, finding evidence that the number of past but recent Property Tax Foreclosures in a localized area significantly predicts the likelihood of a future foreclosure. I extrapolate these findings to mathematical simulations and find evidence that suggests that initial Property Tax Foreclosures played a significant role in cascading many later on. Finally, building off past research that suggests neighborhood blight disproportionally affects white residential preferences and patterns, I perform an empirical analysis that examines how the initial distribution of Property Tax Foreclosures in Detroit neighborhoods played some role in determining how those neighborhoods have experienced racial demographic change.

Predictors of US states’ adoption of naloxone access laws, 2001–2017

BackgroundThe opioid crisis has put an increasing strain on US states over the last two decades. In response, all states have passed legislation to implement a portfolio of policies to address the crisis. Although effects of some of these policies have been studied, research into factors associated with state policy adoption decisions has largely been lacking. We address this gap by focusing on factors associated with adoption of naloxone access laws (NAL), which aim to increase the accessibility and availability of naloxone in the community as a harm reduction strategy to reduce opioid-related morbidity and mortality. MethodsWe used event history analysis (EHA) to identify predictors of the diffusion of naloxone access laws (NAL) from 2001, when the first NAL was passed, to 2017, when all states had adopted NAL. A variety of state characteristics were included in the model as potential predictors of adoption. ResultsWe found that state adoption of NAL increased gradually, then more rapidly starting in 2013. Consistent with this S-shaped diffusion process, the strongest predictor of adoption was prior adoption by neighboring states. Having a more conservative political ideology and having a higher percentage of residents who identified as evangelical Protestants were associated with later adoption of NAL. ConclusionStates appear to be influenced by their neighbors in deciding whether and when to adopt NAL. Advocacy for harm reduction policies like NAL should take into account the political and religious culture of a state.

Does the birth of a child still prompt a marriage? A comparison of Austria, France, Germany and Hungary

ABSTRACT Austria, France, Germany, and Hungary are four neighbouring European societies all with conservative welfare regimes, yet with distinct institutional and structural features. We investigate how these differences shape a particular example of culturally contingent behaviour: cohabiting couples’ marriage behaviour when they have a child. Based on a discussion of relevant differences in family policy, legal frames and normative contexts, we develop hypotheses on country-specific marriage patterns. We test these hypotheses using longitudinal data from the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) and the German Family Panel (pairfam). A number of relevant covariates were harmonized in order to be able to control for potential confounders which may affect the fertility process as well as marriage formation. Using discrete-time event history analysis, we observe robust differences in the effects of fertility on the marriage rate of cohabiting couples between the four countries. Pregnancy increases the marriage rate in Austria, Germany and Hungary, whereas no significant effect of fertility is found for France. After childbirth, the transition rate drops to its pre-pregnancy level in Austria and Germany and even below that in Hungary. Our findings point to a critical role of the socio-cultural context in which couples make relevant decisions about their private lives.

Welfare regime patterns in the social class-fertility relationship: Second births in Austria, France, Norway, and the United Kingdom

This paper develops a theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between social class and fertility. The framework borrows elements from social class analysis, institutional perspectives on the labor market and fertility, and welfare and gender regime theories. I hypothesize that individuals’ social class positions impinge on their economic security, employment–parenthood role compatibility, and gender relations, which are key variables in the explanation of fertility in contemporary postindustrial societies. Different combinations of these variables for each social class and country lead to class-specific fertility patterns. I use Austrian, French, Norwegian, and British samples from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, for the years 2004–2015, and discrete-time event–history analysis techniques to analyze second birth probabilities. A simultaneous equations approach is adopted to account for unobserved heterogeneity. The results document substantial differentials between social classes and distinct social class patterns for each country, consistently with the theoretical expectations. In Norway and France, overall high levels of second birth probabilities are found that follow a positive social ordering. In the United Kingdom and Austria, a U-shaped relationship between class and second birth probabilities prevails. Once unobserved heterogeneity is accounted for in the analyses, social class shows a positive effect on fertility in the four countries. The results show that social class is not only key to understanding intracountry differentials in fertility but is also useful for understanding the functioning of the welfare regime and its relationship to overall levels of fertility.

Editorial Introduction: Exploring policy diffusion, collaborative governance, and policy conflict

Editorial Introduction: Exploring policy diffusion, collaborative governance, and policy conflict

The changing relationship between socio-economic background and family formation in four European countries

Family formation, a process that includes union formation, fertility, and their timing and order, has become increasingly diverse and complex in Europe. We examine how the relationship between socio-economic background and family formation has changed over time in France, Italy, Romania, and Sweden, using first wave Generations and Gender Survey data. Competing Trajectories Analysis, a procedure which combines event-history analysis with sequence analysis, allows us to examine family formation as a process, capturing differences in both the timing of the start of family formation and the pathways that young adults follow. Regarding timing, socio-economic background differences in France and Sweden have remained relatively small, whereas in Italy and Romania higher parental education has become more strongly associated with postponement. Pathways tend to diverge by socio-economic background, particularly in Sweden and France. These results indicate that while family formation patterns have changed, they continue to be stratified by socio-economic background.

Global Environment and Local Governments: Global Norms, Policy Adoption, and Local Diffusion

This article investigates a central question in modern organization theory, how organizations adapt to environmental changes by examining the diffusion of environmental ordinances among Korean local governments, 1995 to 2016. There are two waves in the diffusion; ‘Environment Basic Ordinance (1996-2007)’ and ‘Green Growth Ordinance (2010-2013).’ We argue that Korean local governments have increasingly become autonomous and accountable actors that respond to diversified stimulus from surrounding environments, while also concerning about their own needs and capacity. Hence, in adopting ‘Green Growth Ordinances,’ competitively adopted in the 2010s, Korean local governments considered more factors than they had done for ‘Environment Basic Ordinances.’ Employing event history analysis, we find empirical support for this argument. By comparing the diffusion pattern of the two environmental ordinances, this paper traces changing mechanisms of local environmental governance as well as policy diffusion among Korean local governments.

Information and Policy Innovation in U.S. States

Information is a critically important, yet hard to measure, component on policy innovation across state governments. Widespread use of broadband has made it easier for governments to observe other actors, increasing the amount of policy information, while also diversifying the sources of information available to policymakers. This should translate into making governments more innovative over time and quicker to adapt to challenges. At the same time, the Internet may disrupt previous existing flows of information by decreasing the importance of geographic proximity and creating more nationalized or global information networks. We argue that the growth of broadband has made states more innovative over time, while also reducing the reliance on neighboring state adoptions for policy solutions as the information environment becomes both richer and more nationalized. We estimate a pooled event history analysis on hundreds of policies comparing the treatment period (2000–2016) with a control condition (last two decades of the 20th century) and find that states with higher broadband subscriptions are more innovative overall and less reliant on geographic contiguity for policy solutions. The growth of information flows due to digital communications has led to states becoming more innovative while also operating in a more nationalized network.

Assessing the equity and effectiveness of PerformanceStat systems

The PerformanceStat approach to performance management emphasizes leadership involvement, top-down accountability routines, and rapid application of data, a configuration likely to improve measured outcomes in targeted areas but with high risk of adverse effects in non-targeted or neglected areas, such as equity and social justice. We test these hypotheses in examining the impact of CompStat policing on crime reduction, the intended target, and on racial disparities in arrest rates, a neglected consequence. Event-history analysis and semi-parametric controls of 14 years of data for a nationwide sample of U.S. police departments in small- to medium-size cities find that CompStat is associated with some reduction in crime, with variation across crime types and the indication of distinct prior trends for adopters. At the same time, CompStat significantly increases the risk of arrests among blacks, especially juveniles, supporting concerns about the adverse unintended consequences.

The impact of occupational structures on ethnic and gendered employment gaps: An event history analysis using social security register data.

Ethnic and gendered employment gaps are mainly explained by individual characteristics, while less attention is paid to occupational structures. Drawing on administrative data, this article analyses the impact of occupational characteristics on top of individual attributes in the urban labour market of Vienna. Both set of variables can explain observed employment gaps to a large extent, but persistent gaps remain, in particular among females. The article's main finding is that the occupational structure appears to have gendered effects. While men tend to benefit from ethnic segregation, women face difficulties when looking for jobs with high shares of immigrant workers. Looking for jobs in occupations that recruit from relatively few educational backgrounds (credentials) is beneficial for both sexes at the outset unemployment, but among females this competitive advantage diminishes over time. The article concludes by discussing potential strategies to avoid the traps of occupational segregation.

The Initiative Process and Policy Innovation in the American States

AbstractWe utilize a new policy adoption database with over 500 policies to test whether the initiative process influences the timing of policy adoption. Prior studies have produced both supportive and null findings of the effect of the initiative, but typically examine policies one policy or a single composite score at a time. Theoretical accounts suggest that the initiative process should have heterogeneous effects on policy outcomes depending on the configuration of public and government preferences. By pooling hundreds of policies we are able to estimate the average effect of the initiative process on state policy adoption more systematically while also evaluating variation in its effect. We find via a pooled event history analysis that the initiative tends to increase innovativeness, but that this effect can be cancelled out by signature and distribution requirements. We find that this effect varies substantially across policies and is more consistently positive on average in states more liberal populations. We also find evidence that the initiative process moderates the effect of ideology on policy adoption, while making the adoption of non-ideological policies more likely on average.

Have You Ever Seen the Rain? It Looks Like It's Going to Rain!

This empirical study examines, whether the weather situations during the different seasons in which panel surveys are carried out have an impact on the timing and extent of survey participation. Based on considerations regarding the panellists’ habits and their assessment of a participation's benefits and costs compared to alternative action, it is assumed that ‘pleasant’ weather diverts them from immediately completing the questionnaire while ‘unpleasant’ weather results in a higher degree of participation right after survey launch. The results of event history analysis based on longitudinal data from a multi-wave panel confirm these assumptions. Additionally, there seems to be an interaction between the season and the weather situation: ‘Pleasant’ weather in spring results in a lower participation rate compared to surveys in summer while, given the same weather situation, the participation rate is higher in autumn. Finally, it is evident that regardless of the season, heavy rainfall at the beginning of the field period is most beneficial for conducting an online survey in terms of both rapid response and high participation rates.

COVID-19 and European carcerality: Do national prison policies converge when faced with a pandemic?

The article analyses an original dataset on policies adopted in 47 European countries between December 2019 and June 2020 to prevent coronavirus from spreading to prisons, applying event-history analysis. We answer two questions: 1) Do European countries adopt similar policies when tackling the COVID-19 pandemic in prisons? 2) What factors are associated with prison policy convergence or divergence? We analyze two policies we identified as common responses across prisons around the world: limitations on visitation rights for prisoners, and early releases of prisoners. We found that all states in our sample implemented bans on visits, showing policy convergence. Fewer countries (16) opted for early releases. Compared to the banning of visitation, early releases took longer to enact. We found that countries with prison overcrowding problems were quicker to release or pardon prisoners. When prisons were not overcrowded, countries with higher proportions of local nationals in their prisons were much faster to limit visits relative to prisons in which the foreign population was high. This research broadens our comparative understanding of European carcerality by moving the comparative line further East, taking into account multi-level governance of penality, and analyzing variables that emphasize the ‘society’ element of the ‘punishment and society’ nexus.

The effects of a special sequential mixed-mode design, and reminders, on panellists\u2019 participation in a probability-based panel study

The sequential mixed-mode strategy has become standard practice in the survey management of longitudinal studies, in order to achieve consistently high response rates. To realise this aim in a cost-efficient way, a first mode is often an online questionnaire, towards which the target persons are pushed, and a second mode is then a telephone interview, offered to those who do not respond to the initial mode. However, the rationale for using the sequential mixed-mode plus “push-to-web” strategy to reduce the burden of choosing between survey modes, in order to maximise survey participation, could be undermined if there is an overlapping field period during which the target persons could choose between two or more offered modes. The use of reminders might be useful in solving this problem of competing risks. In the context of a multiple-panel study, this question was investigated by utilising longitudinal paradata from the fieldwork, as well as procedures of event history analysis that are adequate for the analysis of processes with competing risks. First, for a web survey as the initial mode and computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) as the subsequent mode, it was found that the idea of a sequential mixed-mode plus “push-to-web” strategy does work even in the case of competing risks in the choice of a survey mode. Second, it was confirmed that reminders are a useful instrument for stimulating panellists to choose the running survey mode. Third, and finally, it was found that this feature of survey management is effective in countering panellists’ procrastination in regard to responding to a survey.

Sickness Absence and Disability Pension in the Very Long Term: A Finnish Register-Based Study With 20 Years Follow-Up.

Sickness allowance is paid for short-term sickness absence and is thus an indicator of temporary ill health, but it is also associated with a heightened risk of receiving disability pension. Using event history analysis, we examined the long-term risk for disability pension receipt after first observed receipt of medically certified sickness allowance in each single year after sickness allowance was first recorded. Utilizing longitudinal data from the Finnish population register, covering the period 1989–2010, we observed 110,675 individuals aged 16–40 years at baseline. Using discrete-time hazard models, we estimated how the first observed receipt of sickness allowance was related to the risk of receiving disability pension, with an average follow-up time of 20.6 years. In this population, about 40 percent received sickness allowance and 10 percent received disability pension. In the first years after sickness allowance receipt, there was a substantial difference between long-term and short-term sickness allowance recipients in the hazard of becoming a disability pensioner. This difference levelled out over time, but even 20 years after the first observed sickness allowance receipt, the hazard of disability retirement was more than 15 times higher than that of non-recipients of sickness allowance. Patterns were similar for men and women. First observed receipt of sickness allowance is a powerful predictor for disability pension receipt, also in the very distant future. Thus, it can be used to monitor people with heightened risk of becoming more permanently ill and falling outside the labour market.

Adapting Family Size and Composition: Childhood Mortality and Fertility in Rural Spain, 1750–1949

An event-history analysis of ten rural villages in Spain from 1750 to 1949 indicates that the likelihood of parents having additional children was influenced by the number of their surviving children and the children’s sex composition. Parents whose children had a low survival rate had more children than parents whose children generally survived. Exclusively having daughters during the pre-transitional period also reflected, to a limited degree, the likelihood of new conception. The results suggest that some families adapted their reproductive behavior to their desired objectives. In the pre-transitional period, as well as during the transition itself, decisions to control or encourage fertility often appear to have been based on family size and composition.