Public support for Brexit has declined since the 2016 referendum. We argue that part of this decline is due to cohort replacement where many older voters (who support Brexit) have passed away, while younger voters (who oppose Brexit) have entered the electorate. Using a series of original YouGov surveys from 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022, each representative of the UK electorate, we first demonstrate the large and stable differences in Brexit support between younger and older voters. Next, we employ demographic decomposition calculations to estimate that cohort replacement alone accounts for approximately one third of the decline in aggregate Brexit support in just 6 years (with two thirds of the decline being explained by within-cohort changes). Furthermore, by combining our data on Brexit support with Office for National Statistics cohort projections up to 2030, we derive testable hypotheses about the pressure that cohort replacement will continue to put on Brexit support over the next decade across a wide range of potential scenarios. Altogether, our study demonstrates the powerful role that cohort replacement plays in shaping British (and European) politics in the post-Brexit world.

Background: Survivors of childhood cancer may face difficulties at school. We investigated whether childhood cancer affects attainment of upper secondary education, in a register-based cohort study from Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, where we limit bias from selection and participation.

Methods: From the national cancer registers, we identified all long-term survivors of childhood cancer diagnosed aged 0–14 years in 1971–2005 (n = 7629), compared them to matched population comparisons (n = 35,411) and siblings (n = 6114), using odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Results: Overall, 6127 survivors (80%) had attained upper secondary education by age 25, compared to 84% among comparison groups. Elevated OR for not attaining this level were mainly confined to survivors of central nervous system (CNS) tumours (OR_{Surv_PopComp}2.05, 95%CI: 1.83–2.29). Other risk groups were survivors who had spent more time in hospital around cancer diagnosis and those who had hospital contacts in early adulthood, particularly psychiatric. Survivors of all cancer types were less likely to have attained upper secondary education without delay.

Conclusions: Although survivors of childhood cancer experienced delays in their education, many had caught up by age 25. Except for survivors of CNS tumours, survivors attained upper secondary education to almost the same extent as their peers.

Research on intergenerational inequality has primarily focused on the relationships between parental and filial socioeconomic standing. A related literature has concerned whether family dynamics and position in the family relate to intergenerational inequality. This entry reviews work on the relationships between family dynamics and intergenerational inequality, as well as on birth order and intergenerational inequality. Increases in family dissolutions and family complexity has stimulated a large research literature into their impacts on children’s life chances. While family transitions imply major changes in children’s living circumstances which in some cases have long-term implications, the importance of family dynamics in the intergenerational reproduction of inequality is at most moderate. The other part of the chapter reviews research into the effects of birth order: First-born children systematically attain higher socioeconomic status and perform better according to several measures. We discuss the implications of this finding for intergenerational inequality.

Parental separation is associated with a range of negative outcomes for children experiencing it, and there is ongoing scholarly and public interest in whether these associations reflect causal effects of parental separation. We estimate the effect of parental separation on children's educational achievement in Sweden using the proportion of male colleagues at the maternal workplace as an instrumental variable for parental separation. We discuss our instrumental variable approach in the context of the literature on the heterogeneous effects of parental separation. In the empirical analysis, we use population register data on 387,411 Swedish children born between 1990 and 1996 and measure educational achievement through their grade point averages in the final year of compulsory schooling. We find that parental separation does not have a negative effect on educational achievement and that this result is robust across a range of specifications. We argue that our results are informative of the effects of a large share of parental separations, in which parents dissolve relatively well-functioning unions.

The aim of this study is to investigate if experiencing childhood trauma (emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect, or sexual abuse) or a greater total burden of childhood trauma increase the risk of fear of childbirth (FOC). This study included 2556 women living in Southwest Finland. Women were recruited during routine ultrasound visits at gestational week (gwk) 12. Experiencing childhood trauma was assessed in retrospect with the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS) questionnaire completed at gwk 14. Information on the diagnosis of FOC (ICD-10 diagnosis O99.80) was obtained from the Finnish Medical Birth Register. Associations between childhood trauma (domains and total TADS score) and FOC were analyzed with logistic regression in unadjusted and adjusted models. Emotional abuse (aOR 1.25, 95% CI 1.10–1.42), emotional neglect (aOR 1.26, 95% CI 1.08–1.46), and a greater total burden of trauma (TADS total score) (aOR 1.06, 95% CI 1.02–1.10) increased the risk for FOC. We found no evidence for physical abuse (aOR 1.15, 95% CI 1.00–1.32), physical neglect (aOR 1.06, 95% CI 0.92–1.22), and sexual abuse (aOR 1.24, 95% CI 0.99–1.56) associating with FOC. Childhood emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and a greater total burden of childhood trauma increase the risk for FOC. However, the childhood traumatic events were inquired in retrospect, which could distort the events. 

This study demonstrates how an evolving negative educational gradient of single parenthood can interact with changing labour market conditions to shape labour market inequalities between partnered and single parents. We analysed trends in employment rates among Finnish partnered and single mothers and fathers from 1987 to 2018. In the late 1980s’ Finland, single mothers’ employment was internationally high and on par with that of partnered mothers, and single fathers’ employment rate was just below that of partnered fathers. The gaps between single and partnered parents emerged and increased during the 1990s recession, and after the 2008 economic crisis, it widened further. In 2018, the employment rates of single parents were 11–12 percentage points lower than those of partnered parents. We ask how much of this single-parent employment gap could be explained by compositional factors, and the widening educational gradient of single parenthood in particular. We use Chevan and Sutherland’s decomposition technique on register data, which allows us to decompose the single-parent employment gap into the composition and rate effects by each category of the background variables. The findings point to an increasing double disadvantage of single parents: the gradually evolving disadvantage in educational backgrounds together with large differences in employment rates between single and partnered parents with low education explain large parts of the widening employment gap. Sociodemographic changes in interaction with changes in the labour market can produce inequalities by family structure in a Nordic society known for its extensive support for combining childcare and employment for all parents.

Single motherhood has increased throughout Europe. Single mothers assume the dual role of provider and caregiver and often need external support from public policies or kin to meet their needs. Research has focused primarily on public policies, disregarding the role of kin support—and of multigenerational coresidence in particular. This study provides the first detailed description of single mothers’ multigenerational coresidence in Europe. To do so, we combine census and survey microdata from 31 European countries. The data reveal large geographic variation in single mothers’ coresidence. Whereas coresidence is a rare and temporary living arrangement in Northern and Western Europe, it is common and more permanent in Southern, Central, and especially Eastern Europe. At the same time, coresidence has declined in almost all countries with data from the past half-century. These findings suggest large and persistent variation in kin support for single mothers and thus question the assumption of its marginal role in Europe. 

There is a large literature on socioeconomic disparities in health, with a stream focusing on how health influences one’s opportunities to reach a high socioeconomic position. The purpose of this chapter is to pull together and discuss research on the effects of early health on socioeconomic attainment. As socioeconomic outcomes, we consider educational, occupational and income attainment as well as related outcomes, such as cognitive performance, which are sometimes used to explain the effects of health of socioeconomic outcomes. We start by reviewing research on the effects of early health during the prenatal period and infancy as well as later childhood and adolescence and continue to discuss a life course framework of how early health can affect socioeconomic attainment, which builds on the well-known life course models. We conclude by discussing some underrepresented and emerging questions in the literature.

Many demographic challenges and new trends have been observed across formerly state socialist countries after embarking on their political and economic transition. Including countries that range from Eastern Europe to Central Asia, this study explores whether some family-related events were more sensitive to the transformation that occurred in the 1990s than others, and whether the disruption was immediate or delayed across this wide range of contexts. Based on year-specific hazard ratios over four decades, results point to changes in fertility patterns being clearly linked to the transition. Second birth rates reacted almost immediately to societal disruption, whereas a more delayed change occurred for first births. Although abrupt changes in marriage and divorce rates also occurred, these changes often began before the transition and therefore may be part of longer-term developments. That second births were the most sensitive family event to the immediate change in conditions may be due to economic costs, but also unique characteristics related both to its lack of conferring a new social role on the individual, such as in the case of marriage and parenthood, and the narrower window of time in which this event usually occurs. The delayed changes in first births may instead reflect changes in norms and culture that influenced younger individuals when they reached childbearing ages.

Many immigrant groups disproportionately experience unemployment and this disadvantage often extends to their children—the second generation. This paper contributes to this stream of research by studying unemployment dynamics of the ancestral population and second-generation immigrants in Sweden. In particular, we ask: does unemployment persistence differ between ancestral Swedes and 10 second-generation immigrant groups? We answer this question using correlated dynamic random-effects logit models to study the effect of past on current unemployment—also known as genuine state dependence. We use Swedish register data to follow individuals over their early working careers. The results indicate that although past unemployment has a similar relative effect on current unemployment across the ancestry groups, past unemployment increases the probability of current unemployment (absolute effect) more among second-generation Middle-Eastern, Turkish, and Southern European immigrants. Because of higher baseline levels of unemployment, the labour market consequences of similar relative effects are more pronounced among the second generation as compared to ancestral Swedes. The paper concludes by elaborating on the reasons behind these contrasting results while highlighting the importance of examining heterogeneous effects on both the relative and absolute scales.