Household Panel Study Research Articles

The Impact of Adaptive Preferences on Subjective Indicators: An Analysis of Poverty Indicators

Subjective indicators are often criticized since they are thought to be particularly affected by the phenomenon of adaptive preferences and social comparison. For social policy purposes, processes of downward adaptation in disadvantaged individuals are of particular importance, i.e., it is supposed that such people compare themselves with others who are in the same precarious situation or even worse off and, as a result, lower their expectations and adapt their aspirations and preferences to their material and financial constraints. Based on the 2006–2010 waves of the Swiss Household Panel study, this contribution examines whether, and to what degree, indicators of material deprivation, subjective poverty and subjective well-being are affected by such downward adaptations. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that the bias caused by adaptation processes varies considerably among different measures and that, although subjective indicators are indeed often affected by this phenomenon, there are also robust measures, notably Townsend’s deprivation measure, Hallerod’s proportional deprivation index and the subjective well-being measure of general life satisfaction.

Modeling Household Decisions Using Longitudinal Data from Household Panel Surveys, with Applications to Residential Mobility

Many events occurring to married or cohabiting individuals are the result of decisions made jointly by both partners. However, studies of life-course events usually take an individual or head-of-household perspective and so do not explicitly reflect the joint nature of these decisions. Household panel studies and population registers are a rich resource for the study of household events, but analyzing such data presents major analytical challenges. Models should ideally allow for the influence of both partners in a couple’s decision making and be flexible enough to handle the facts that individuals can change their partners and have periods when they are not in coresidential unions. In this article, the authors propose two types of multilevel random-effects models to address some of these issues: a “multiple-membership” model in which the outcome depends on a weighted combination of the random effects for each decision maker and a random-coefficients model that allows different random effects for individuals when they are single and partnered. All methods are discussed in terms of a binary household outcome before describing more general discrete-choice models for nominal outcomes. The proposed methods are compared with previously used approaches in a simulation study and illustrated in analyses of residential mobility using data from the British Household Panel Survey.

Maternal labor market return and domestic work after childbirth in Britain and Germany

This study investigates how the duration of maternal labor market interruptions and mothers' employment status after return relate to the division of domestic work in couples after childbirth in West Germany, East Germany, and Britain. It extends the literature by considering how these two aspects of postnatal labor market return decisions of mothers may give rise to or counteract growing gender inequality in domestic work afterbirth events. Using data on 826 British and 1614 German new parent couples based on the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) (1991–2008) and on the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) (1990–2010), I apply fixed-effects panel models. Mothers perform more housework with increasing length of their employment interruptions across the three contexts. For childcare, longer time-outs increase mothers' childcare share in West Germany but not in East Germany. This result is in line with institutional variations in day-care provision. Across contexts, mothers' full-time returns are associated with a larger reduction in their domestic work share than short time-out. After mothers returned to part-time employment, couples show no or much weaker compensating behaviors for longer previous maternal time-outs than after a full-time return.

Cohort Variations in the Membership of Voluntary Associations in Great Britain, 1991–2007

This article uses longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Study to examine trends in the level of membership in a range of voluntary associations from 1991 to 2007. It has been suggested that the membership of voluntary associations is in decline in western societies and the analysis examines the trajectory of the number of memberships with age for four 10-year age cohorts born between 1935 and 1975. The results for men show lower levels of membership over time for the 1955–1964 and 1965–1974 cohorts in comparison to those of earlier born cohorts. For women, levels of membership were only notably lower for the 1965–1974 cohort. The differences in the probability of belonging to an organisation between cohorts were similar in magnitude to those between categories of social class and education. Cohort differences in the membership of voluntary associations are interpreted to reflect primarily the impact of changing social and economic conditions on individual’s capacity for involvement.

Ambition, Human Capital Acquisition and the Metropolitan Escalator

Gordon I. R. Ambition, human capital acquisition and the metropolitan escalator, Regional Studies. This paper examines the relation between ambition, as a form of dynamic human capital, and the escalator role of high-order metropolitan regions, as originally identified by A. J. Fielding. It argues that occupational progression in such places particularly depends on concentrations both of people with more of this asset and of jobs offering preferential access to valued elements of tacit knowledge, interacting in thick, competitive labour markets. This is partially confirmed with analyses of British Household Panel Study (BHPS) data on long-term progression showing that only the more ambitious gain from residence in the extended London region, and that they only progress faster there.

Measurement invariance of big-five factors over the life span: ESEM tests of gender, age, plasticity, maturity, and la dolce vita effects.

This substantive-methodological synergy applies evolving approaches to factor analysis to substantively important developmental issues of how five-factor-approach (FFA) personality measures vary with gender, age, and their interaction. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) conducted at the item level often do not support a priori FFA structures, due in part to the overly restrictive assumptions of CFA models. Here we demonstrate that exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), an integration of CFA and exploratory factor analysis, overcomes these problems with the 15-item Big Five Inventory administered as part of the nationally representative British Household Panel Study (N = 14,021; age: 15-99 years, Mage = 47.1). ESEM fitted the data substantially better and resulted in much more differentiated (less correlated) factors than did CFA. Methodologically, we extended ESEM (introducing ESEM-within-CFA models and a hybrid of multiple groups and multiple indicators multiple causes models), evaluating full measurement invariance and latent mean differences over age, gender, and their interaction. Substantively the results showed that women had higher latent scores for all Big Five factors except for Openness and that these gender differences were consistent over the entire life span. Substantial nonlinear age effects led to the rejection of the plaster hypothesis and the maturity principle but did support a newly proposed la dolce vita effect in old age. In later years, individuals become happier (more agreeable and less neurotic), more self-content and self-centered (less extroverted and open), more laid back and satisfied with what they have (less conscientious, open, outgoing and extroverted), and less preoccupied with productivity.

Older age and ill‐health: links to work and worklessness

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the relationship between health and employment in older age.Design/methodology/approachQualitative methods are used with some additional quantitative analysis to explore emergent themes. The qualitative analysis is based on interviews with 56 men and women between the ages of 50 and 68. This part of the study uses the respondents’ own words to explain how physical and mental ill‐health has impacted on labour market participation and vice versa. The quantitative analysis uses data from the British Household Panel Study and multivariate techniques.FindingsThe research highlights the complexity, individuality and two‐way causality underlying the relationships between health, work and worklessness in older age. The analysis also suggests that type of job and workplace conditions matter. The negative impact of the onset of ill‐health on employment participation only appears to be accentuated by age for women.Research limitations/implicationsThe two data sets are not directly comparable.Social implicationsPlanned rises in the age at which state pensions are payable need to be accompanied by policies that improve the health of older people and changes in workplace practices that facilitate longer working lives.Originality/valueThe paper has a specific focus on the relationship between ill‐health and employment in older age; uses qualitative methods to draw out the main issues and quantitative analysis to draw additional insights and make some comparisons with younger cohorts.

Family and Fertility: Kin Influence on the Progression to a Second Birth in the British Household Panel Study

Particular features of human female life history, such as short birth intervals and the early cessation of female reproduction (menopause), are argued to be evidence that humans are ‘cooperative breeders’, with a reproductive strategy adapted to conditions where mothers receive substantial assistance in childraising. Evolutionary anthropologists have so far largely focussed on measuring the influence of kin on reproduction in natural fertility populations. Here we look at the effect in a present-day low-fertility population, by analysing whether kin affect parity progression in the British Household Panel Study. Two explanatory variables related to kin influence significantly increase the odds of a female having a second birth: i) having relatives who provide childcare and ii) having a larger number of frequently contacted and emotionally close relatives. Both effects were measured subject to numerous socio-economic controls and appear to be independent of one another. We therefore conclude that kin may influence the progression to a second birth. This influence is possibly due to two proximate mechanisms: kin priming through communication and kin assistance with childcare.

Does the effect of job loss on psychological distress differ by educational level?

We examine the impact of involuntary job loss on psychological distress and investigate whether the impact differs by educational level using a sample of men drawn from the British Household Panel Study. We expect higher-educated men to suffer less from job loss because they have more resources and better re-employment chances. Alternatively, it could be that, in the long run, lower-educated men adapt better to continued unemployment or downward mobility. Fixed effects regression analyses show that job loss increases distress, but over time the effect wears off and is limited to non-employed men. We find that higher-educated men experience less distress following job loss. These educational differences in the impact of job loss become smaller over time and are mainly driven by re-employment chances.

Modeling Dynamic Preferences: A Bayesian Robust Dynamic Latent Ordered Probit Model

Much politico-economic research on individuals' preferences is cross-sectional and does not model dynamic aspects of preference or attitude formation. I present a Bayesian dynamic panel model, which facilitates the analysis of repeated preferences using individual-level panel data. My model deals with three problems. First, I explicitly include feedback from previous preferences taking into account that available survey measures of preferences are categorical. Second, I model individuals' initial conditions when entering the panel as resulting from observed and unobserved individual attributes. Third, I capture unobserved individual preference heterogeneity both via standard parametric random effects and a robust alternative based on Bayesian nonparametric density estimation. I use this model to analyze the impact of income and wealth on preferences for government intervention using the British Household Panel Study from 1991 to 2007.

Tracking sample members in longitudinal studies

Minimizing sample attrition through failure to locate sample members who move is a major concern for all longitudinal studies. Most major longitudinal surveys employ a wide range of tracking procedures and have relatively low rates of sample attrition due to failure to locate. As Couper and Ofstedal (2009) discuss, the likelihood of locating sample members who move is influenced primarily by survey design factors such as tracking procedures and the interval between waves and by structural or societal factors, such as the availability of population registers and mail forwarding rules. In this article, I report the main themes emerging from a 2-day workshop on tracking sample members in longitudinal studies which took place in London in July 2010. The workshop brought together around 50 participants from child cohort and household panel studies around the world to share experiences and current practices. There were presentations from longitudinal studies based in Europe, United States, and Australia. The broad range of countries and types of studies represented at the workshop highlighted the importance of the institutional and legal contexts in different countries and the similarities and differences in approaches taken by studies with different designs, in particular between household panel and child cohort studies and between local area and national studies.

Women's Retirement Income in Germany and Britain

This article analyses women’s retirement income in the context of two distinct welfare states. In addition to women’s employment history, we consider their marital history over the life course as an important determinant of retirement income. We use longitudinal data for women born between 1930 and 1940 from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study. The results shed light on the mechanisms through which welfare states transmit gender inequality over the life course into retirement. In both countries, single women have higher retirement income than continuously married women. But there are also significant cross-country differences. In the corporatist-conservative German welfare state, marriage over the life course leads to greater dependence on a male breadwinner in retirement than in the liberal British welfare state.

The HILDA Survey: a case study in the design and development of a successful Household Panel Survey

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey is one of only a small number of well established, large nationally representative household panel studies conducted in the world. With annual data collection commencing in 2001 there are now over 10 years of unit record data available to researchers, with the promise of many more to come. While the design of the HILDA Survey owes much to other older household panel studies conducted elsewhere, it has a number of features which make it relatively unique. This paper provides a brief history of the HILDA Survey’s progress to date, focusing first on its design, content and data collection processes, before reviewing its achievements with respect to survey response and usage.

Residential Mobility: Wealth, Demographic and Housing Market Effects

AbstractThe study presents a very simple model in which housing equity can influence mobility, and then estimates parameters that gauge the impact of housing equity, local house prices and other variables associated with household structure and change on residential movement within the UK. The data come from the British Household Panel Study over 1992–2008, which allow us to use within‐person variation to identify the parameters. The parameter estimates indicate that estimates based on cross‐section variation are seriously biased in our analysis. We check the robustness of our results to errors in measuring equity using an instrumental variable estimator. Our main finding is that an increase in a household's housing equity encourages residential mobility substantially, and a decline discourages it.

Village-level Behavior Under Conditions of Chronic Conflict

Drawing on a panel study of households established in 2002 and a revisit in 2008–2010 to a subsample, this paper explores the livelihood pathways of 24 households in 3 villages in Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan. It finds that most households were worse off than they were in 2001, although they experienced a brief period of relative prosperity based on the 1 market choice available, opium poppy. The paper draws attention to the corporate nature of villages and their variable capacity to support the provision of village-level public goods. This variability is influenced in part by the relative richness of the resource base of the village and the related degree of social differentiation. Where land inequalities are high and the elite are economically secure, they have few incentives to widen provision of public goods and can be immune from social sanctions. Where the elite are economically insecure, they are likely to have a shared interest in supporting village solidarity and a moral economy and may promote the provision of public goods. External interventions focusing on village governance need to pay much greater attention to village preconditions given the extent to which the effects of such interventions are often subject to the behavior of the elite and preexisting customary structures.

Becoming a Parent and Relationship Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Dyadic Perspective

This study investigated the extent to which women's and men's relationship satisfaction within couples is similarly or differently affected by becoming a parent and the extent to which changes in work hours and hours spent on household labor affect a person's own and his or her spouse's relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood. The authors conducted longitudinal dyadic analyses, based on 12 waves of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). They selected 689 couples who remained together during the period of observation and who were employed, childless, and living with their partner (of which 28% married) at the first moment of observation. The results revealed that relationship satisfaction of both members in a couple changed in tandem. Although work hours and household labor had some effect on people's own and their spouse's relationship satisfaction, these factors did not account for the U‐shaped relationship satisfaction pattern associated with the transition to parenthood.

Does personality moderate reaction and adaptation to major life events? Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

A nationally representative panel study of British households was used to examine the extent to which Big Five personality traits interact with the experience of major life events (marriage, childbirth, unemployment, and widowhood) to predict increases and decreases in life satisfaction following the event. Results show that major life events are associated with changes in life satisfaction, and some of these changes are very long lasting. Personality traits did not have consistent moderating effects on the association between stressful life events and life satisfaction over time.

Spousal similarity in depression: A dyadic latent panel analysis of the panel study of Belgian households.

Dyadic latent panel analysis (DLPA) was applied to eight waves of the Panel Study of Belgium Households (N = 954 couples). DLPA decomposes the observed variance of both members of a dyad into variance due to stable factors, factors that gradually change over time, and occasion-specific factors including random error. Total observed similarity between members of a dyad on one occasion is decomposed into stable similarity, similarity in factors that change over time, and occasion-specific similarity. The results show that depressive symptoms are influenced by stable and changing factors and that spousal similarity in both factors contribute to spousal similarity in depression on a single occasion. Spousal similarity in factors that change gradually over time suggests that shared-environmental factors contribute to depressive symptoms.

Guest Editorial: the origins of Understanding Society

Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, is a new household panel survey motivated by the success of longitudinal studies in the UK, and funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) with co-funding from UK government departments. The UK has a diverse and rich portfolio of longitudinal studies including the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), based on 5,500 households, which ran for eighteen years from 1991 and is the predecessor of Understanding Society. The BHPS continues to be a widely used dataset in the UK and internationally, but as the panel matured it was recognised there was a need to look to the future of longitudinal data resources for the coming decades in the UK. The ESRC and the wider academic community saw this as a strategic priority to meet the emerging data needs of the social science and policy-making communities. The ESRC were successful in establishing funding for a new study which would incorporate the existing BHPS sample but with an expanded and ambitious scientific research agenda. What follows is a short description of the study’s development to date to provide the background for the papers included in this special section. In July 2005, the ESRC submitted a pivotal bid to the UK Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund, which typically funds key infrastructural investments across the natural sciences. The success of this bid represented a sea change in funding mechanisms for the social sciences, with the growing recognition that large data sets are the key infrastructural investments for the social sciences, equivalent to laboratories for the natural sciences such as the Large Hadron Collider facility in Geneva. The bid sought funding for a new and much larger household panel study, following a consultation report carried out by Longview, which recommended renewal and major expansion of the BHPS (Martin et al 2004). In May 2006, the then Office for Science and Information agreed funding for the new household panel study. The new UK household longitudinal study (UKHLS), which became known as Understanding Society, was to have the following features: • A longitudinal survey, with at least a 20 year life, of a cross-section of UK households • A sample size of 40,000 households • Innovative methods and types of data collection • A resource facilitating research on a wide variety of issues, involving not just traditional social science but linking to medical and environmental sciences • Data collection starting in 2008

Gender Equality and Outsourcing of Domestic Work, Childbearing, and Relationship Stability Among British Couples

This study investigates whether gender inequality in the division of housework and child care may be an obstacle to childbearing and relationship stability among different groups of British couples. Furthermore, it explores whether outsourcing of domestic labor ameliorates any negative effects of domestic work inequality. The empirical investigation uses event-history analysis based on 14 waves (1992-2005) of the British Household Panel Study. The author finds that the association between domestic work arrangements and family outcomes vary by the presence of children, women’s employment, and gender role attitudes. Gender inequality in domestic work reduces relationship stability among egalitarian childless women and among all mothers. For first and second births as outcomes, the association is weaker and depends on the level of inequality and women’s employment status, respectively. Domestic outsourcing is not significant for these family outcomes with the exception of formal child care, which is positively associated with the risk of a second birth.