The Emergence of Dual-Earner Couples:A Longitudinal Study of the Netherlands

In this article, the authors address the extent to which full-time working couples in the Netherlands have gone through compositional changes with respect to young children and educational level. Using a stacked data set of 13 large-scale labour force surveys collected by Statistics Netherlands ranging from 1977 to 2002 (N = 461,003 Dutch households), the authors first studied whether the increase of full-time working couples is a result of cohort and/or period effects. It is concluded that the steady growth of full-time working households is mainly accounted for by cohort succession: in coupl... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Gils, Wouter van
Kraaykamp, Gerbert
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
Reihe/Periodikum: Gils , W V & Kraaykamp , G 2008 , ' The Emergence of Dual-Earner Couples : A Longitudinal Study of the Netherlands ' , International Sociology , vol. 23 , no. 3 , pp. 345 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580907076576
Schlagwörter: demographic and social change / full-time employment / couples / compositional change / cohort analysis
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29191305
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://hdl.handle.net/11370/69178e55-782d-4148-931e-104a697da2da

In this article, the authors address the extent to which full-time working couples in the Netherlands have gone through compositional changes with respect to young children and educational level. Using a stacked data set of 13 large-scale labour force surveys collected by Statistics Netherlands ranging from 1977 to 2002 (N = 461,003 Dutch households), the authors first studied whether the increase of full-time working couples is a result of cohort and/or period effects. It is concluded that the steady growth of full-time working households is mainly accounted for by cohort succession: in couples from younger birth cohorts, both partners increasingly prefer to work full-time. Second, the study investigated the composition of those full-time working couples. As a starting point, it is clear that full-time working couples are mostly found among those with a higher educational level and without any children. For this composition, the authors’ analyses show that over time and cohorts the educational level of full-time working couples increases more than that of male single-earners or combination households. Most important is that the negative effect of having young children for full-time working couples became more negative over cohorts, indicating that combining children and full-time work as a couple has become less attractive in recent cohorts.