TY - JOUR T1 - The Cost of Widowhood: A Matching Study of Process and Event JF - SocArXiv Papers Y1 - Forthcoming A1 - Van Winkle, Zachary A1 - Thomas Leopold KW - depression KW - economic wellbeing KW - life course KW - Widowhood AB - Widowhood is a common life transition entailing far-reaching consequences. We examine the consequences of widowhood in a novel way by assessing the consequences of bereavement for meaningful comparison groups allowing us to evaluate the impact of bereavement before and after the event. The analysis of the cost of widowhood for mental health and economic wellbeing focuses on two scenarios: unexpected and expected widowhood. The first scenario models a two-period process in which effects of widowhood occur only after the event. The second models a three-period process in which effects of widowhood also occur before spousal loss. US Health and Retirement Study data and a combination of random-coefficient modelling, propensity score matching, and regressions are used to estimate the consequences of widowhood from ten years before to six years after spousal loss. Results on mental health show a slow but full recovery for unexpected widowhood, but larger and lasting declines for expected widowhood. Findings on economic wellbeing show sizable losses for expected widowhood due to the economic cost of the pre-widowhood period. In sum, the impact of widowhood is smaller for unexpected compared to expected events. Our approach advances knowledge about spousal loss, but also research on life events more generally. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Parental Separation and Children’s Genetic Influences on Education across 20th Century Birth Cohorts JF - SocArXiv Y1 - Forthcoming A1 - Van Winkle, Zachary A1 - Baier, Tina KW - cohort comparison KW - Education KW - Gene-Environment Interaction KW - parental separation AB - Whether the family context matters for genetic influences on children’s educational attainment remains an open question. Previous research mainly considers parents’ socio-economic standing and overlooks a key dimension of social stratification: childhood family structure. We focus on the extent that parental separation affects genetic influences on educational attainment across 20th Century birth cohorts. This study draws on the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to estimate the association between education polygenic scores and educational attainment of adults born across the 20th Century who experienced a parental separation before age 16 compared to adults who lived continuously with both parents. We find that genetic effects are smaller for adults whose parents separated compared to adults whose parents remained coupled. Moreover, the magnitude of genetic effects remained constant across cohorts for adults from two-parent households, but decreased for adults whose parents separated. Additional analyses based on the comparison with adults who lost a parent during childhood indicated that family instability rather than parental absence supresses genetic effects among those whose parents separated. Our findings highlight the importance of socio-historic variation in distinct family conditions linked to parental separation that in turn affect children’s chances to tap their genetic potential for education. ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Genome-Wide Heritability Estimates for Family Life Course Complexity. JF - Demography Y1 - 2021 A1 - Van Winkle, Zachary A1 - Dalton C Conley KW - biodemography KW - Family KW - heritability KW - life course KW - Sequence analysis AB -

Sequence analysis is an established method used to study the complexity of family life courses. Although individual and societal characteristics have been linked with the complexity of family trajectories, social scientists have neglected the potential role of genetic factors in explaining variation in family transitions and events across the life course. We estimate the genetic contribution to sequence complexity and a wide range of family demographic behaviors using genomic relatedness-based, restricted maximum likelihood models with data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study. This innovative methodological approach allows us to provide the first estimates of the heritability of composite life course outcomes-that is, sequence complexity. We demonstrate that a number of family demographic indicators (e.g., the age at first birth and first marriage) are heritable and provide evidence that composite metrics can be influenced by genetic factors. For example, our results show that 11% of the total variation in the complexity of differentiated family sequences is attributable to genetic influences. Moreover, we test whether this genetic contribution varies by social environment as indexed by birth cohort over a period of rapid changes in family norms during the twentieth century. Interestingly, we find evidence that the complexity of fertility and differentiated family trajectories decreased across cohorts, but we find no evidence that the heritability of the complexity of partnership trajectories changed across cohorts. Therefore, our results do not substantiate claims that lower normative constraints on family demographic behavior increase the role of genes.

VL - 58( IS - 4 ER -