Abstract Countries where public opinion tends to favour gender equality tend to invest in policies supporting the dual-earner family model or the earner–carer family model, while countries where public opinion is more inclined to support conservative gender norms tend to have policies supporting the male breadwinner family model. However, even though gender equality norms may be endorsed by the majority of the population, conservative norms could still be largely supported at the subnational level, potentially leading to lower responses to policy reforms intending to boost gender-equal practices. This study examines shifting norms in fathers’ parental leave uptake in Finnish municipalities in the 2010s, around a reform that gave fathers an independent right to a 6-week quota of “solo” parental leave. We applied a Bayesian spatio-temporal model on administrative data from Finnish municipalities and approximated local norms based on voting data. We also used the proportion of Swedish-speaking residents as a proxy for cross-border policy influences from the neighbouring country Sweden, where paternal leave-taking has been practised longer. Local support to de-familialising policies was found to predict higher leave-taking, but only under a less supportive policy configuration. The proportion of Swedish-speaking residents was found to be increasingly important for predicting paternal leave-taking. We interpret this as a sign of cross-border influences from Sweden. Interestingly, uptake increased the fastest in a more conservative region, probably owing to its strong linguistic and cultural links to Sweden. Furthermore, we observed spatial dependencies between neighbouring municipalities, which supports our spillover hypothesis that interactions among families nearby lead them to adopt new practices.

Abstract How do opportunities for intergenerational mobility depend on where you live? We address this question using European Social Survey data, studying the association between parents’ and children’s occupation, and how it varies by region of residence. Absolute mobility, largely driven by shifts in occupational structure, differs from relative mobility, which reflects the extent to which opportunities are equal across social origins. Capital regions emerge as hubs of absolute, but not necessarily relative, mobility. Absolute mobility correlates with human capital, labor market, demographic, and spatial factors. In contrast, relative mobility is primarily shaped by economic disparities between social classes. Greater inequality entails less mobility, even comparing different places within a country.

Abstract Children with a disability require a greater level of care, which may profoundly affect the lives of their parents as their primary caregivers. However, empirical evidence to quantify the parental care burden of child disability remains scarce. This study aims to uncover the extent to which a child’s disability affects the parental care burden by investigating fathers’ and mothers’ time spent on housework and childcare. Exploiting data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and applying propensity-score matching, we compare the individual time fathers and mothers spend on parental care for children with and without a disability, as well as the division of parental care time within couples. Our findings indicate a parental care burden of child disability of an additional 19 minutes per day for fathers and 26 minutes per day for mothers. This extra burden is most significant for mothers of children with a disability aged 0 to 2, with 1 hour and 25 minutes per day. Furthermore, the parental care burden is particularly pronounced in fathers of later birth cohorts, and parents with a lower educational attainment level, with multiple children, or residing in West Germany. While the parental care burden of child disability is disproportionally higher for mothers than fathers, we find no evidence for an association with the division of parental care time within couples. Our study is the first to provide quantitative evidence for the increased parental care burden of child disability from a population perspective, potentially explaining adverse spillover effects on family dynamics and all family members’ wellbeing and health.

Abstract Past research has extensively examined trends in relative rates of intergenerational social class mobility in 20th-century Western Europe. However, less attention has been given to how patterns of social fluidity may have changed over time. This study addresses this gap by analyzing trends in the social fluidity pattern and its sources, their cross-national commonalities, and their implications for inequalities in relative mobility chances, using data on individuals born in 1938–1987 from 15 Western European countries. Leveraging a topological model to describe patterns of relative rates, this study identifies their sources in three kinds of “primary factors”: class hierarchy, class inheritance, and status affinity. The findings reveal that the apparent stability in the levels and patterns of social fluidity is not due to stability in primary factors. Instead, it reflects changes in primary factors that offset each other. Conversely, changes in the levels and patterns of social fluidity occur when several, if not all, primary factors change in ways that do not fully offset each other. Although stability in social fluidity is common, notable differences emerge in how primary factors change across genders and groups of countries with similar fluidity levels and geopolitical characteristics. Overall, the results suggest a tendency towards stable social fluidity, likely maintained by advantaged parents who continually adjust their mobility strategies to protect their children from social demotion, responding dynamically to changes in the opportunity structure.

Abstract The article studies effects of social policies on in-work poverty risks, distinguishing between measures that either intervene in labour market processes—that is, pre-distribution policies—or redistribute towards those with low incomes. The analyses use data from EU-SILC and macro-level indicators from various sources to estimate general as well as household-type-specific effects using longitudinal methods. Results reveal important differences between specific policies: Increasing minimum wages contributes to reducing low-wage risks but has no significant effect on in-work poverty risks. In contrast, there is a negative effect of strict employment protection legislation across almost all household types on in-work poverty, which is consistent with the positive role this measure plays in supporting earnings that are sufficient to provide not only for one person but also for potential dependants in the household. With respect to redistribution policies, both unemployment benefits and benefits to low earners reduce poverty due to their contribution to public poverty reduction. However, whereas unemployment benefits reduce in-work poverty only among couple households, benefits to low earners mainly contribute to lower poverty risks among employed single parents. Overall, the results underscore that pre-distribution and redistribution as well as universal and targeted interventions cannot easily substitute for each other.

Abstract Faced with the demographic shift to a smaller and older labour force, the recruitment of migrants and their successful integration into the labour force is an essential challenge for all European countries. This article discusses the immigrant-native gap regarding the risk of overeducation for 28 European countries on the basis of the EU-LFS 2021 ad hoc module. Immigrants’ higher overeducation risks are interpreted as the result of processes of legal closure and statistical and taste-based discrimination. Higher overeducation rates of third-country nationals (TCNs) in contrast to EU migrants indicate that EU citizenship reduces discrimination and facilitates the recognition of educational certificates—they are skill-preserving devices for EU citizens but not for TCNs. The large overeducation rates in Southern Europe can be explained by segmented labour markets with higher unemployment and lower skill requirements increasing overeducation risks, particularly for TCNs. Moreover, it can be shown that EU citizenship, a higher educational level of the population, and more inclusive labour markets facilitate the occupational integration of immigrants.

Abstract Public concerns about economic inequality are large and growing, and they have been shown to affect people's charitable giving and volunteering. While empirical literature addresses this issue, it provides little evidence on the underlying mechanisms linking inequality and civic engagement. Scholars from different disciplines have proposed numerous hypotheses about these mechanisms, with the social disintegration, conflict, relative power, and unmet needs hypotheses among the most frequently suggested. In this study, we apply mediation analysis to survey data from Austria and Germany (N = 1,691) to assess which of these mechanisms help explain the relationship. Our results support the social disintegration and unmet needs hypotheses: individuals who completely agree that income inequality is too high are slightly less likely to give to charity (volunteer) due to the indirect relationship through generalised social trust and substantially more likely to give to charity (volunteer) due to the indirect relationship through impure altruism compared to those who completely disagree that income inequality is too high. These findings imply that multiple mechanisms work in opposing directions. Our study provides an important step in theory development in this field and serves as a basis for future experimental studies.

Abstract Preschool is acknowledged as a strategy for promoting long-term educational attainment and fostering equality of educational opportunities. Most of these expectations are based on evidence from rather recent periods. Leveraging retrospective data from cohorts born between 1900 and 1973 in Spain, we examine the historical evolution of returns to early education and its potential for equalization. We argue that this equalizing potential is contingent upon the degree of selectivity in accessing and completing a specific educational stage. Specifically, only when a given level becomes less selective, does preschool contribute to increased educational equity. Our evidence unveils two novel insights. On the one hand, the magnitude of returns underwent important changes over time, with more recent periods demonstrating diminished payoffs. On the other, the broadly documented equalizing potential of preschool is a function of the selectivity in accessing each educational level, suggesting that preschool has not always been an equalizing investment.

ABSTRACT With the emergence of Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion, youth climate activism has attracted increasing attention. Climate strikes are part of a long trajectory of mobilizations for climate justice, rooted in global justice and environmental struggles. Although research on social movements has analyzed differences and continuities within these, there have been few systematic comparisons between youth climate strikes and ‘traditional’ climate justice marches. Our paper contributes to fill this gap. We focus on the framing of climate change in two different protest actions that took place in Milan, Italy, during the Pre-COP26 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021: a climate strike by Fridays for Future, and a ‘traditional’ climate justice march by a wide coalition of actors. Relying on protest surveys and qualitative interviews, we discuss differences, similarities, and spaces for convergence among activists in these different fora, focusing on the framing of climate change, and on the meanings attached to ‘system change’.