Strings of Adulthood: A Sequence Analysis of Young British Women’s Work-Family Trajectories

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 23 - Trang 369-388 - 2007
Arnstein Aassve1, Francesco C. Billari2, Raffaella Piccarreta3
1ISER, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, UK
2Carlo F. Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics, IMQ and IGIER, Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy
3IMQ and Carlo F. Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics, Università Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Tóm tắt

Employment, union formation and childbearing are central processes within young individuals’ transition to adulthood. These processes interact in highly complex ways, and they shape actual life-course trajectories that may be seen as a conceptual unit. In this article we use a methodology to cluster life-course experiences, where all three processes are embedded explicitly, in order to study young women’s trajectories in Great Britain. Drawing on a sample from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we define life-courses as sequences on a monthly time scale and we apply optimal matching analysis to compute dissimilarities between individuals. We then use standard clustering algorithms and we identify nine distinctive groups of women. Our results are then shown using a new representation of clusters and interpreted in the light of the existing socio-demographic literature on the dynamic work-family link.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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