Livet i familierne har betydning for den retning, velfærdssamfundet bevæger sig i.

For børnene og de unge skabes muligheder, evner og karaktertræk i familien, og for mange voksne er den rammen om oplevelser, omsorg, tryghed og kærlighed.

Samtidig er det også sådan, at valget af samlivsformer i dag er mangfoldige. Mange bryder med det traditionelle, og viden om livet i de nye livsformer er derfor vigtig.

ROCKWOOL Fonden har gennem de seneste år opbygget en omfattende viden om familier og den betydning, de i samspillet med deres omgivelser udøver på individer og samfund.

Analyserne er imidlertid ikke tidligere blevet publiceret i en sammenhængende fremstilling.

For at øge den praktiske brug af fondens resultater udsendes derfor nu denne samlende formidling af forskningen i emnekredsen, herunder også analyser af familiemarginaliserede individer i form af børn og unge i mistrivsel eller anbragt udenfor hjemmet.

I bogen præsenteres endvidere en helt ny analyse af livet og trivslen i regnbuefamilierne.

Childhood poverty increases the likelihood of adult poverty. However, past research offers conflicting accounts of cross-national variation in the strength of—and mechanisms underpinning—the intergenerational persistence of poverty. Here the authors investigate differences in intergenerational poverty in the United States, Australia, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom using administrative- and survey-based panel datasets. Intergenerational poverty is decomposed into family background effects, mediation effects, tax and transfer insurance effects and a residual poverty penalty. The intergenerational persistence of poverty is 0.43 in the United States (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.40–0.46; P < 0.001), compared with 0.16 in the United Kingdom (95% CI = 0.07–0.25; P < 0.001) and 0.08 in Denmark (95% CI = 0.08–0.08; P < 0.001). The US disadvantage is not channelled through family background, mediators, neighbourhood effects or racial or ethnic discrimination. Instead, the United States has comparatively weak tax and transfer insurance effects and a more severe residual poverty penalty. If the United States were to adopt the tax and transfer insurance effects of its peer countries, its intergenerational poverty persistence could decrease by more than one-third.

Increasingly children whose parents no longer live together are living in two households, alternating between family contexts. A growing literature documents strong, descriptive heterogeneities in children’s wellbeing across living arrangements. We combine longitudinal survey and administrative population data on 6000 Danish children born in 1995 to study how children’s emotional and behavioral problems change following parental union dissolution. Extending the existing, predominantly descriptive literature, we use several panel regression strategies that aim to control for unobservable confounding together with repeated measurement of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire to study children’s problems increase after parental union dissolution and examine heterogeneity across post-dissolution living arrangements. We find a substantial increase in emotional and behavioral problems following union dissolution, but only little evidence for substantial heterogeneity existing across post-dissolution family constellations and living arrangements. Our findings indicate that not only there is casual effect of parental union dissolution on children’s long-term wellbeing, but also that existing descriptive findings on differences across living arrangements likely are due to selection.

Scholars agree that educational gradients in fertility vary by context, with indications of more positive educational gradients in northern and western Europe since the turn of the century. However, despite theoretical and empirical research on rural-urban differences in fertility, our understanding of subnational regional variation and urban-rural differences in the relationship between education and fertility remains limited. Utilising large-scale administrative data from seven countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden) at around the turn of the century, this study identifies substantial subnational regional differences in the association between female education on the one hand, and birth hazards or synthetic parity progression ratios on the other. With respect to urbanisation, we find that higher shares of foreign-born women in more urbanised populations are associated with more negative educational gradients in fertility. Hence, we present a first descriptive step towards the development of a research agenda to explain regional and urban-rural variation in educational gradients in fertility.

In July 2002, Danish reforms limited the marriage opportunities for all Danish and non–European Union (EU) citizens younger than 24 living in Denmark who wished (or whose parents wished for them) to marry someone from outside the EU. Before the reform, more than 80% of first- and second-generation immigrants from outside the EU married spouses from their parents’ origin countries; the reform drastically changed their marriage market. We examine the policy's effects on subsequent marriage behavior, the transition to motherhood, human capital accumulation, and labor market activities using full-population administrative data on 578,380 Danish-born first- and second-generation non-EU immigrants born in 1972–1990 and a difference-in-differences design. We find that the policy delayed marriages among individuals with an immigrant background, extended premarital cohabitation, changed the composition of spouses, and delayed and decreased in-wedlock fertility. Finally, the duration of obtained formal education increased. Our results emphasize that reforms constraining access to external marriage markets can have lasting impacts on marriage demographics among immigrants.

Child maltreatment and child welfare system contact are both associated with an elevated risk of adverse outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Yet, data on variation in system contact are available for only a handful of countries, limiting knowledge about the societal correlates of system contact. As reported in this research note, we identified, collected, and harmonized administrative data on child welfare agency investigations, confirmed maltreatment, and placements into out-of-home care for 44 countries in the Global North. We analyzed 15 sociodemographic factors commonly associated with child maltreatment and child welfare system contact. Results support three core conclusions. First, data are much more available on late-stage system contact (e.g., foster care caseloads) than for early-stage system contact (e.g., investigations). Second, whereas early-stage contact tended to be on the rise in most countries, late-stage contact was stable or declining. Cross-national variation in these trends was generally less substantial than cross-national variation in levels of child welfare system contact, indicating relatively stable cross-national differences. Third, cross-national variation in out-of-home care largely reflected, but was not reducible to, regional and sociocultural variation: we find little evidence for universal drivers of foster care caseloads across the Global North.

We study whether the educational disadvantage of children from households where parents have dissolved their union is due to selection or deteriorating non-school environments and whether exposure to school environments compensates or exacerbates such disadvantage. We apply a differential exposure approach (DEA) to Danish population data collecting public-school reading comprehension tests. The approach exploits variation in children's birth dates and test administration dates to decompose children's learning as the product of joint exposure to school and non-school environments. We find that children experiencing parental separation have 5-7 per cent lower test scores, with lower learning returns to non-school environments, and diminishing learning outcomes proportional to time spent in separated households. Critically, school appears to neither mitigate nor exacerbate these achievement gaps, suggesting that degrading of non-school environment post-separation primarily impacts children's learning.

Most analyses of the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contacts compare outcomes of the second generation to the criminal history of the first generation. Ignoring the demographic process underlying transmission introduces selection bias into estimates insofar as the first generation's criminal history affects the family formation and the probability of parenthood. I study how differential selection into fatherhood across criminal histories may affect prospective transmission of criminal justice convictions. I use administrative data on the complete fertility patterns and criminal justice history all Danish men born during 1965–1973 and retrospective odds-ratio estimates of intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contacts to estimate prospective transmission of crime and the impact of differential fertility on cohort criminal justice involvement. Seriousness of criminal justice involvement is associated with earlier transition to fatherhood but ultimately higher levels of childlessness. The findings suggest that the existing retrospective estimates of the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contacts overestimate the population level dynastic transmission. Ignoring differential fertility across criminal justice history leads to upward-biased estimates of how criminal justice involvement is maintained across generations when using retrospective sources. Population-level description of fertility trends has substantial implication for theoretical understanding of how transmission of offending occurs at the population level.

Previous research identifies stark socioeconomic disparities in child injuries, yet research on the repercussions hereof on other aspects of children's lives remains sparse. This paper tests whether social gradients in minor traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs or concussions) contribute to corresponding inequalities in children's academic performance. Previous research on this topic is mostly based on small samples and confounded by non-random selection into experiencing mTBIs. We improve on prior research by using high quality, large N, administrative registry data. Further, we control for selection into having an mTBI via comparing the test score progression of children having an mTBI with children who experience an mTBI in later years (staggered difference-in-differences). Based on Danish ER/hospital records and national test score data, we find that children from families with lower earnings and less education are more likely to experience an mTBI and that having an mTBI negatively correlates with reading test scores. However, comparing present with future mTBI cases, we show that having an mTBI within a year before a test does not negatively affect children's reading scores. Our findings suggest that negative correlations between mTBIs and academic performance more likely reflect socioeconomic gradients in mTBI incidents rather than a direct causal effect. Further, socioeconomic gradients in mTBI incidents do not significantly contribute to corresponding disparities in academic performance.