Simulating family life courses: An application for Italy, Great Britain, Norway, and Sweden

Maria Winkler-Dworak, Paola Di Giulio, Eva Beaujouan and Martin Spielauer
Additional contact information
Maria Winkler-Dworak: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Paola Di Giulio: Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Eva Beaujouan: Universität Wien
Martin Spielauer: Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung

Demographic Research, 2021, vol. 44, issue 1, 1-48

Abstract: Background: Family patterns in Western countries have changed substantially across birth cohorts. The spread of unmarried cohabitation, the decline and postponement of marriage and fertility, and the rise in nonmarital births, partnership instability, and repartnering lead to an increasing diversity in family life courses. Objective: In this paper we demonstrate how to set up a tool to explore family life trajectories. This tool models the changing family patterns, taking into account the complex inter-relationships between childbearing and partnership processes. Methods: We build a microsimulation model parameterised using retrospective partnership and childbearing data. The data cover women born since 1940 in Italy, Great Britain, and two Scandinavian countries (Norway and Sweden), three significantly different cultural and institutional contexts of partnering and childbearing in Europe. Results: We guide readers through the modelling of individual life events to obtain a set of aggregate estimates, providing information on the power, technical structure, and underlying assumptions of microsimulations. Validation of the simulated family life courses against their real-world equivalents shows that the simulations not only closely replicate observed childbearing and partnership processes, but also provide high quality predictions when compared to more recent fertility indicators. Conclusions: Using observed population estimates to systematically validate the results both validates our model and increases confidence that microsimulations satisfactorily replicate the behaviour of the original population. Contribution: We create and validate a microsimulation model that can be used not only to explore mechanisms throughout the family life course but also to set up scenarios and predict future family patterns.

Keywords: fertility; partnerships; microsimulation; Italy; United Kingdom; Norway; Sweden; family life course (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol44/1/44-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:demres:v:44:y:2021:i:1

DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2021.44.1

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Demographic Research from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Editorial Office ().