In Episode 9 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Professor Andrew King and Matt Hall from DIAL's CILIA-LGBTQI+ research programme discuss their work exploring how Agent Based Modelling (ABM) can contribute to the study of LGBTQ lives, and conversely, how theory and insights from LGBTQ studies can inform the practice of ABM.  Further links Queer(y)ing Agent-Based Modelling: An example from LGBTQ workplace studies is a DIAL Working Paper 

DIAL

Modelling the LGBTQ workplace for new insights and understanding

In Episode 8 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Katri Räikkönen from Helsinki University and a member of DIAL’s PremLife project, talks about her research investigating whether the babies of mothers who whilst pregnant are prescribed steroid drugs, because of concerns around premature births, are more likely to develop behavioural and mental disorders later on. Associations Between Maternal Antenatal Corticosteroid Treatment and Mental and Behavioural Disorders in Children is research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

Antenatal steroids: are there links with mental and behaviour problems later on?

In Episode 7 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Rita Pereira from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and a member of DIAL’s Gene Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities(GEIGHEI) project, talks about her research looking at the links between mothers' smoking and their baby's birthweight. The Interplay between Maternal Smoking and Genes in Offspring Birth Weight is a DIAL Working Paper by Rita Dias Pereira, Cornelius Rietveld and Hans van Kippersluis.

Mums who smoke and their baby's birthweight

In the third Episode of Series 2 of our podcast looking at research emerging from the Equal Lives project, we talk to Zafer Büyükkeçeci from Humboldt University in Berlin and Professor Vered Kraus from the University of Haifa about their research, Work and family life courses among Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian Women in Israel. They use newly-available linked Census and administrative data to look at who leads a more advantaged or disadvantaged work-family life. They discuss how they created the life course groups, what they found and the implications of the research. 

The work and family lives of women in Israel

In Episode 6 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Sirus Dehdari from the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University and a member of DIAL's Populism, Inequality and Institutions (PII) project, talks about his research looking at whether support for anti-immigration political parties increases or decreases when native-born voters work alongside migrants. Workplace Contact and Support for Anti-Immigration Parties is a DIAL Working Paper by Henrik Andersson and Sirus H. Dehdari   

Working with migrants: does it increase or decrease support for anti-immigration political parties?

In Episode 5 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Ana Cristina Santos from the CILIA project talks about her research looking at the life experiences of LGBTQI+ people in Portugal. Ana Cristina  from the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra has has been speaking with older people about what it was like for them growing up and living in times when gender and sexual diversity was prohibited.    

From outcast to citizen: the time travels of LGBTQI+ elders in Southern Europe

In Episode 4 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Ayten Bilgin and Marina Mendonça from DIAL’s PremLife project discuss their research looking at the romantic and sexual relationships of adults who were born pre-term or with a low birth weight and the potential knock on effects of that on their physical and mental wellbeing. Research details Association of Preterm Birth and Low Birth Weight With Romantic Partnership, Sexual Intercourse, and Parenthood in Adulthood: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis is research by Marina Mendonça, Ayten Bilgin and Dieter Wolke and is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Open)  

Born preterm or low weight? What could that mean for your relationships and wellbeing later on?

In Episode 3 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Katharina Heisig and Larissa Zierow from DIAL's IMCHILD project discuss their research looking at the impacts of parental leave reform in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). They discuss the happiness outcomes of adults who, as children, as the result of the policy reforms, spent 12 months at home with their mother rather than in State run childcare.  The baby year parental leave reform in the GDR and its impact on children’s long-term life satisfaction is a DIAL Working Paper by Katharina Heisig and Larissa Zierow from DIAL's IMCHILD project. 

First 12 months with mum: will you be happier later on?

In the second Episode of Series 2 of our podcast looking at research emerging from the Equal Lives project, we talk to Jani Erola and Hannu Lehti from the University of Türku in Finland about their research, The heterogeneous effects of parental unemployment on siblings' educational outcomes. They use high quality Finnish data and robust methods to see how having an unemployed parent affects how teenage children get on at school. They discuss their findings and what they might mean for those seeking to support the families of people out of work and to reduce inequalities over the life course.

Unemployed parent? How does that affect a teen's school choices and achievements?

In Episode 2 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Jesper Fels Birkelund from the Lifetrack project talks about his research looking at the educational aspirations and achievements of the children of immigrants in Denmark. He shares findings from the research and outlines their implications for policy in Denmark and more widely in Europe.  Aiming high and missing the mark? Educational Choice, Dropout Risk, and Achievement in Upper Secondary Education among Children of Immigrants in Denmark is research by Jesper Fels Birkelund, and is published in the European Sociological Review.  

Aiming high and missing the mark?

In Episode 1 of Series 3 of the DIAL Podcast, Professor Yvette Taylor from DIAL's CILIA LGBTQI+ project talks about her research with Matson Lawrence looking behind the celebratory rhetoric of the UK Government's LGBT Action Plan published in 2018. She also discusses emerging findings from the project and  LGBTQI+ people say about their lives and how they view the 'progress' claimed in the plan and more widely by politicians.  The UK government LGBT Action Plan: Discourses of progress, enduring stasis, and LGBTQI+ lives ‘getting better’ is research by Matson Lawrence and Yvette Taylor and is published in the Journal of Critical Social Policy.  

The UK LGBT Action Plan: a look behind the celebratory rhetoric

In the first Episode of Series 2 of our podcast looking at research emerging from the Equal Lives project, we talk to Marika Jalovaara from the University of Türku in Finland and Anette Fasang from Humboldt University in Berlin about their research, Family Life Courses, Gender and Mid-Life earnings. The research explores whether the reputation of Nordic countries for having family friendly policies  that create a fairer and more equal society is deserved. Using register data from Finland, the researchers look at the earnings of adults based on their family lifecourse and reveal 2 groups of young adults who should be a focus for policy makers and researchers going forward.  Transcript Do Nordic countries live up to their promise of creating fairer and more equal societies? In the first Episode of Series 2 of our podcast looking at research emerging from the Equal Lives project, we talk to Marika Jalovaara from the University of Türku in Finland and Anette Fasang from Humboldt University in Berlin about their research, Family Life Courses, Gender and Mid-Life earnings. The research explores whether the reputation of Nordic countries for having family friendly policies  that create a fairer and more equal society is deserved. Using register data from Finland, the researchers look at the earnings of adults based on their family lifecourse and reveal 2 groups of young adults who should be a focus for policy makers and researchers going forward.  Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In this series we discuss findings from DIAL’s Equal Lives project which looks at how inequality impacts the lives of young adults. Our guests today are Marika Jalovaara from the University of Türku in Finland and Equal Lives Principal Investigator Anette Fasang from Humboldt University in Berlin. They have been looking at family life courses, gender and midlife earnings. I started by asking Marika about the background to the research. Marika Jalovaara 0:30   Our study focuses on how the combination of family events across the life course is associated with midlife earnings for men and women. Many studies on family lives on inequality only look at what we call penalties and premiums associated with specific single-family events such as getting married or becoming a parent or getting divorced. For instance studies on so called motherhood penalties compare women with and without biological children to show disadvantages associated with motherhood but over the life course people experience different combinations of family events. Some cohabit, some get married, some separate or divorce, many re-partner maybe several times and some do none have these and most do combinations. And we wanted to see how the combined occurrences of family events is associated with midlife earnings and we look at both annual and accumulated earnings at midlife. Christine Garrington  1:30   Okay right, so Anette who and what were the main focusses of this particular piece of research? Anette Fasang 1:34   So unlike many previous studies that compare mothers to childless women we looked at men and women with all types of family life courses in this study and we focus specifically on Finland. So Finland is particularly interesting in our case because it's one of the egalitarian Nordic welfare states that are often seen as a blueprint for family friendly policies and also kind of as forerunners in developing social and gender inequality but recently there has also been some debate on whether the Nordic model really achieves its egalitarian goals so we wanted to see if it can live up to its promises. Christine Garrington  2:14   Okay, can you tell us where you got your information from and why it was such a good source of data for looking at these questions? Anette Fasang 2:22  Yeah so we used an unusually rich data set and combining information from several administrative data sources so called register data. For example, from taxation registers, also birth registers, residential registers where we have very detailed information for several thousand men and women covering their life course from age 18 to almost up to age 40. And this is really quite unusual to have such broad access to different types of administrative data that enabled us to do this study it also provides very precise earnings information. Christine Garrington  3:01   Now Marika as part of the research you use quite specialist techniques to identify seven typical family life courses for people aged from 18 to 39 - how did you go about doing that? Marika Jalovaara 3:13   We used a technique called sequence analysis- it was developed in biology to study strings of DNA but instead of DNA our sequences are given by family life courses. We have said the same individuals every month from age 18 to 39 and reconstruct their family situations over the entire time period and clash analysis that determines the similarity between the sequences and based on that we can group them into so called clusters of similar sequences. And this gives us a typology of different family life courses so each group represent a typical family experience from age 18 to 39. Christine Garrington  3:57   Okay so what were those groups or types of life courses Anette? Anette Fasang 4:01  So first of all we had three of the seven groups that were characterised by a long lasting marriage. One was a marriage with few or no children - mainly childless marriage some had one child late. And then we have two groups that are married with two kids one very early already in their early 20s and the other quite late in their mid to late 30s. In particular these two later groups we also call the normative family life courses because they come from most with societal expectations about getting married and having two children. So in Finland we also have a strong two child norm and they are also most supported by institutions and family policies. But these were only three out of the seven types we then also had four types that's where marriage basically played no role, only a very limited role, despite its normative relevance in Finland. So here we had one group that we call the childless serial cohabitors. These are people who don't have kids and are in unmarried relationships that are oft the short term, then they break up into a new one, these serial cohabitors. Then we have a group of cohabiting parents. So these are unmarried parents that are mostly together in stable relationship their simply not married. And then two groups that were particularly interesting from a social policy perspective, as sort of risk groups, the one as single parents, often early single parents at a young age. And then the second one is a group of never partner, childless individuals, which is quite large in our case, and we were actually surprised to find that it is such a large group with particularly men who never were in longer term committed relationships and don't have children by age 40.  Christine Garrington  5:53   Yeah, that's a group we'll talk about, again in a moment because you say quite important, very interesting. Marika when it came to what people then earned in midlife, which of those groups was earning the most and which was earning the least? Marika Jalovaara 6:04   Earnings were highest for the most normal family life courses that combined stable marriage with having two or more children, for men and women. And midlife earnings were lowest for and unpartnered mothers and four never partnered, childless men. Christine Garrington  6:18   And when you looked specifically at the differences in what men and women were earning, what did you find there? Marika Jalovaara 6:23   But actually, we found that earnings gaps by family lives are small among women, but sizable among men, and the gender disparities in earnings are remarkably high, particularly between men and women with normative family lives. And this kind of gap between married mothers and married fathers remains invisible when looking only at motherhood panellists. This stronger association between family life and midlife earnings for men might be counter intuitive since most research claims that family lives matter more for women's earnings but our findings are in line with research suggesting that marriage plays a larger role in men's labour market outcomes than women's. So women's earnings in Finland are comparably low no matter what their family life course is just maybe for different reasons. Christine Garrington  7:11   And were you surprised to see such big gaps, especially in the more traditional family life course? Anette Fasang 7:15  Yes, we were I mean, first of all, this is against the egalitarian goals of the Nordic welfare states. And previous research had shown them that earnings differences between mothers and childless women, the motherhood penalties are quite low in Finland. So we thought probably here we will find a more egalitarian distribution also by gender. But indeed, we found this very sizable gaps between men and women who are married with children. And this is true even though women have an average higher education than men in Finland. And they also work full-time. So it's not the case that these working mothers simply earn less because they work part-time. But they work full-time just as men, it's simply that their earnings are lower. Christine Garrington  8:01   So are there any clues then to as to what could be causing the gender earnings gap here? Marika Jalovaara 8:06 There are many factors that contribute to this persistent gender earnings gap. Compared to men, women take much longer family leaves. This is partly encouraged by this cash for Care Benefit. It's paid to parents of children under three years of age who are not in public day care, and it's nearly always the mother, who then cares for the children at home for many, many years. And this, of course, affects women's labour market position, and the labour market is highly gender segregated and female dominated fields have lower pay. This gap is not as wide as in liberal countries, but it's still striking given that Finland is one of the most egalitarian nations in the world. Christine Garrington  8:42   So what is the, for you, is the key takeaway about gender earnings gap here then? Anette Fasang 8:47 So our findings really stressed that the motherhood penalty alone would miss a main part of family related earnings inequality in Finland. Instead, here the main source of inequality is between married mothers and fathers. Christine Garrington  9:01   Let's go back now to that other group that really caught your eye - these childless never partnered men tell us about them Anette. Anette Fasang 9:11 Yeah so they were really apparent as a large group. In our analysis 23% of men and our study group were experienced the family life of never being partnered and not having children. And they are interesting as a social risk group also because we see in our analysis that they have the lowest earning among men, so they are socioeconomically disadvantaged and also they don't have a family network and immediate nuclear family network to fall back on. So future research really should analyse this group more and see how they are integrated into wider kinship networks and friendship networks. And what has going on here was this accumulation of disadvantage both in the labour market and in the family domain. Christine Garrington  9:58   Yeah, that 23% of the sample - a really striking figure. So Marika is not having children something that's becoming increasingly common in Finland? Marika Jalovaara 10:08 Fertility levels have declined in the Nordic countries since 2010. And in Finland, the decline is really strong total fertility rate has dropped to 1.41 and level of childlessness are exceptionally high, and they are highest among lower educated women and men. For instance, more than 1/3 of low educated men remain childless. And our previous study has shown that childlessness is strongly related to never partnering, and cohabition instability. And this new study shows that never partnered childless men also have low earnings compared to other men, even when we take into account their education and many other confounders. And this is an example of how socio-economic disparities and family formation can lead to accumulation or disadvantage across the life course of men and women. Christine Garrington  10:56   No, indeed. And for those interested to tackle inequality, Anette, and to make society fairer for all this must be a deeply worrying trend. Anette Fasang 11:04   Yes, I mean, I think our findings show that there are new groups, new social risk groups that are growing like these never partnered, childless men, but also that even in the egalitarian Nordic countries, gender inequality is still very high and persistent, and specifically between men and women who follow these normative family lives. So here, we cannot conclude from low earnings differences between mothers and childless women, that it's an egalitarian with regard to family lives. But policymakers really have to turn to a gender inequality and what is causing it in connection to family lives, but also simply in the labour market to tackle these kinds of inequalities. Christine Garrington  11:47  So to sum up then, you've used advanced research methods from very rich data to examine these important questions. What do you conclude from your findings? And what do they tell us about whether and if so, how these family friendly policies for which the Nordic countries are so well known, are really achieving when it comes to tackling inequality Marika? Marika Jalovaara  12:07   We wanted to see whether the Nordic model really lives up to its promises. And our answer was not really. In the Nordic welfare states the main story might not be inequality between mothers and childless women, but rather between married mothers and married fathers, so these earnings differences between men and women who follow the most normative family lives and among men with different family life courses are among the main sources of inequality that should be tackled with policymakers with egalitarian goals.  Christine Garrington  12:36   Family Life Courses, Gender and Mid-Life earnings  is research by Marika Jalovaara and Anette Fasang and is published in the European Sociological Review. You can find out more about the Equal Lives project at www.equal-lives.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington. And don't forget to subscribe to the DIAL podcast to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. 

Do Nordic countries live up to their promise of creating fairer and more equal societies?

In Episode 12 of the DIAL Podcast, Alessandro Di Nallo from the University of Lausanne talks about his research looking at the links between job loss and divorce for couples to see if the likelihood of separating is greater for more or less advantaged couples. The heterogeneous effect of job loss on union dissolution. Panel evidence from Germany, Switzerland and the UK is research presented at the DIAL Mid Term Conference in June 2019. Transcript Alessandro Di Nallo: Job loss and divorce: worse for disadvantaged couples? In Episode 12 of the DIAL Podcast, Alessandro Di Nallo from the University of Lausanne talks about his research looking at the links between job loss and divorce for couples to see if the likelihood of separating is greater for more or less advantaged couples. The heterogeneous effect of job loss on union dissolution. Panel evidence from Germany, Switzerland and the UK is research presented at the DIAL Mid Term Conference in June 2019. Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In today’s episode we’re talking about the lengths between job loss and divorce, and whether the risk of separation is greater for less advantaged couples. Our guest is Alessandro Di Nallo from the University of Lausanne who started by explaining some of the context of his research. Alessandro Di Nallo  0:21   Job loss and unemployment in general is a stressful event. It triggers a reaction within the couple that eventually increase the level of stress, decrease the perception of attractiveness with the partner, and ultimately also reduce the wellbeing of partners. The alternative channels through which, unemployment can also be dangerous for a couple’s stability could be the self-perception of attractiveness. As the partner who loses his job or her job is considered to be less attractive than he was supposed to be before losing his job. So this decreasing in attractiveness may ultimately lead to the couple to separate, to split up. Christine Garrington  1:06   What do you want to look at specifically? And why in your research in this area? Alessandro Di Nallo  1:12   We want to look at the different effect of unemployment of the male partner and the female partner, they're rarely treated in the literature. And we also wanted to see whether the ethical unemployment changes according to the level of partnership income so does it affect more comfortable advantaged couple or disadvantaged couple. Christine Garrington  1:39   You used two long running studies which track the lives of people in Germany and in the UK over many years, tell us a bit about the data you use, how you could use it to look at this question of whether being out of work increases the risk of separation? Alessandro Di Nallo  1:53 Yeah, so we collected data from two long running studies. The GSOEP, the German survey that's been running since the early 1980s, and to produce surveys. BHPS Understanding Society, that has been running since 1991 combined. We focussed on heterosexual couples in their working age, and that have been in the survey for at least two years. This is important. And then we ended up with even more than 40,000 couples for each survey. Then we separated the couples into two groups, the couples who have experienced a spell of unemployment of at least two months, and those who never did. So the first group is called the treated group, and the second one is the control group. And then we run our sort of quasi experimental methods that is called difference in difference, trying to assess whether the separation rates of the treatment group after experiencing unemployment, were systematically lower, or below the level of the control group. We use an additional method that is called causing and site matching that allows us to pair treated capitals with the comparable couples in the control group according to characteristics such as age, age differences between the partners, education, social class and other characteristics. Christine Garrington  3:14   Let’s turn them to some of your findings. Can you talk first about what you found for men and women in the UK? Alessandro Di Nallo  3:20   So in the UK we found that couples from which men, experienced unemployment, were more likely to separate by how much. Let's see around 1.5 percentage point more than control factor couples. So for instance, if the average predicted probability for separation control factor couple is about, slightly above 2 percent, 1.5 more means 3.5 percent. This risk increases to an extra three percentage point one year after the couple experience males’ unemployment. Well we didn’t find significant effect when it comes to female unemployment. Men’s unemployment is probably more dangerous for a couple of abilities that men take home a larger share of family income. Christine Garrington  4:08   And what about for Germany? Alessandro Di Nallo  4:10 We find more consistent results in Germany. We found extra risk of separation for both couples in which men and women experience unemployment and the extra risk, extra probability of separation ranged between two and three percentage points more with respect to the control factor couples. Christine Garrington  4:28   Out of all of those facts and figures what are the key ones to take away would you say? Sort of what do we learn? Alessandro Di Nallo  4:34   So we learned that men’s unemployment is definitely dangerous for couple’s stability. And that this extra risk of separation is about 5%, 4-5% on a yearly basis. In, on the first year of unemployment and for a four-year window after unemployment. Christine Garrington  4:53   One of the things you took into account is how much people earned. Did that matter? Was that, was that relevant? Alessandro Di Nallo  4:58   Low income families are more prone to separation, probably because they don't have enough resources, financially in the first place to absorb the stress, and to deal with costs due to separation. Christine Garrington  5:12 And in terms of what we learn from your research about how unemployment can impact on relationships then what would you say? Alessandro Di Nallo  5:20 There are reasons for which couples should remain together. Another reason that pull couples apart. So we're not saying that there are the only reasons that pull couples apart. Some mechanisms incentivise couples to stay together such as facing legal fees, increasing childcare costs, housing costs, all these kinds of things probably incentivise the couples to be together. But probably the challenge through which stress increases partnership instability is the prevailing one. We're able to say that among the two channels stress is the overwhelming part. Christine Garrington  5:56   Okay so stress is really key. Now policy makers in both of these countries, and indeed elsewhere, are very keen to keep couples and families together for all sorts of reasons. What can they take away from your findings and from your research would you say? Alessandro Di Nallo  6:09   So, we also find that less advantaged couples tend to split up when they are hit by unemployment, and they are significantly more so. So, it means that they are particularly exposed to increasing risk, deriving from separation - as I told you direct costs, childcaring and so on. Which impact on a larger fraction of household income for the low income family. So these are hidden costs of separation which taxation reform might relieve at least in part. There's also some research, highlighting the fact that couples that are more prone to separation have probably characteristics that lead them to be more prone to job loss. I'm talking about undesirable individual traits, such as personality disorders, anti-social tendencies, mental health problems. So this triggers a problem of self-selection of these couples into both unemployment and instability. And that's why we're looking for alternative methods that approach a causal link between unemployment, and separation.  Christine Garrington  7:15   So where did your research go from here? Alessandro Di Nallo  7:17   we'd like to analyse alternatives, an additional country would probably include Switzerland in our analysis, and then we'd like to explore more the reason why man’s unemployment is so more consequential for couples’ stability or instability in the UK, other than in Germany, and probably we're looking at how the division of resources and the participation to income pooling within the family is organised in the two countries.  Christine Garrington  7:46  The heterogeneous effect of job loss on union dissolution. Panel evidence from Germany and the UK is research presented at the DIAL mid term conference in June 2019. You can find out more about the NORFACE funded DIAL projects at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.

Alessandro Di Nallo: Job loss and divorce: worse for disadvantaged couples?

In Episode 11 of the DIAL Podcast, Dilnoza Muslimova from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam talks about birth rank, genes and how well children get on in life and whether and how parental investment matters.  Birth rank, genes and later life outcomes was presented at the DIAL Mid Term Conference in June 2019 and is part of the NORFACE-funded project Gene-Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities.  Transcript In Episode 11 of the DIAL Podcast, Dilnoza Muslimova from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam talks about birth rank, genes and how well children get on in life and whether and how parental investment matters. Birth rank, genes and later life outcomes was presented at the DIAL Mid Term Conference in June 2019 and is part of the NORFACE-funded project Gene-Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities.  Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In today’s episode we’re talking about birth rank, genes and how well children get on in life. And whether and how parental investment matters. Our guest is Dilnoza Muslimova from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, who is also a member of the DIAL research project Gene-Environment Interplay in the Generation of Health and Education Inequalities. She started by explaining the background to her research. Dilnoza Muslimova 0:28 We're very interested in how parental time investments interplay with the genetic endowment of children and how those parental time investments can overcome the genetic disadvantages that children have. So in that respect birth rank speaks a lot about the family environment. And yeah, it can be whether you have your older siblings, it can be whether I don't know how much time your parents spent with you, or like, generally, what is the attention that you're receiving, and we were taught that by the literature that talks a lot about parental time investment and the birth rank, couple of studies, they find that for example, children who are born later to the family.  They receive on average about 20 to 30 minutes less of parental time being at the same age as their older siblings. And we thought that it's quite interesting to explore another study also finds this, that gap, siblings have in education and IQ, from the older sibling to the later sibling is almost half of this gap explained by parental time investments.  Christine Garrington  1:36 Everybody's interested in this whole sort of nature nurture debate I think but it's really challenging to get information about or data about people's genetics, and the life they lead. Where do you get your information from for this particular study that you're doing? Dilnoza Muslimova 1:52 We were quite lucky that we got funding and were obtaining access to several biobanks and biobank is basically the data storage of all the genetic information, and also biomarkers. Biomarkers are blood measures, and saliva measures, urine samples and so on. I have actually visited one myself in the Netherlands. It was very interesting to observe how they store it as biological samples for individuals at minus 80 degrees Celsius in the freezers, and some freezers are actually quite advanced enough to make it it's quite exciting to see how people are very invested and want to obtain very much like evidence based research and have precise measures of your health and your genetic information. Christine Garrington  2:42 And we’re talking about lots of people right? Lots of people. Dilnoza Muslimova 2:44 Yeah, for the UK biobank that we're using in our study it’s 500,000 people and it's amazing because the larger the sample, the more precise, or more representative our results are. So yeah we're quite lucky and another advantage of this biobank, is that they also survey people. In the same data set, you can find their health and genetic information but also their life outcomes; their income, their educational attainment and this allows a lot of prospects for research. Christine Garrington  3:15 Like you say an incredible resource, incredible. So what aspects of participants’ genetic makeup, did you look at specifically? You have said some of the things that are available in the, in the biobank, what sorts of things do you look at and what were you able to tell from those? Dilnoza Muslimova 3:31 When we talk about genetic endowments, it's a bit tricky because it's not like the whole genetic endowment that we look at. The saliva is collected from an individual, and then the genetic material in saliva is genotype, basically, your gene is coded 99% of the code is very similar to other people. It's what makes us human. Like what gives us two legs, two arms and so on. And one percent is different, and it makes us more individual. We look at this 1% variation between individuals and their genome wide association studies, which try to analyse how this variation predicts life outcomes for example, education, IQ. There are very particular things like, I don't know preference for tea. Yeah but we tried to focus on more established robust variants such as education and IQ, and the recent studies established that the variation explained by genes is almost the same as variation explained by income in education. So, it's about 10 or 12% of variation in your outcome. We look at that specific aspect of the genetic information of an individual.  Christine Garrington  4:45 So in simple terms, then what were you able to establish about birth ranks? So where brothers and sisters come in terms of order that they're born, and what that meant for someone's IQ level and educational attainment later on? Which is what you were keen to try to establish. Dilnoza Muslimova 5:02 So aside of adding genetic information we established, we managed to replicate the earlier studies that show birth rank is negatively correlated with individuals’ IQ and individuals’ educational attainment, which is like the later you're born, that lowers your education or IQ. But interestingly, there is no association between your genetic potential and birth rank. It means that a lot of variation, like a lot of causes are more environmental than genetic  Christine Garrington  5:37 So it's more to do with what happens after you are born in the family environment? Dilnoza Muslimova 5:42 Exactly, yep because there is no difference in the potential between the siblings at conception. So that's very interesting. Christine Garrington  5:49 Yeah that's a really important message isn't it? And so tell us about some of the other key things that you've found so far? Dilnoza Muslimova 5:55 Well the other finding that we find is basically that children who are disadvantaged genetically. So they have lower than average polygenic risk score recorded for education, or IQ, they're more hampered by being born later. So, in other words, this finding translates into if we bridge it with parental time investments that it might be quite difficult for children with lower genetic endowment for education to catch up with their siblings, if they have lower parental investment. Basically what advantages about genes and birth they are both random within families. So, your genetic endowment is fixed at conception and it is randomly assigned based on your parental genes and your birth rank is also randomly assigned at your birth so you don't choose your preference. It is not chosen by someone, it's just a random. So when you look at the interaction of the birth rank and your genetic endowment .This is what we find that people who are weaker genetically, or who have lower genetic potential, if they were born later than they have even lower educational attainment or IQ, later in life.  Christine Garrington  7:04 Now, it is important to be clear about what these findings don't imply as much as what they do. So tell us first about how we should interpret them. Dilnoza Muslimova 7:13 I think it's very important to make clear that we do not mean that people who are born later are genetically disadvantaged. So it is very clear and this is one of the findings that we empirically confirm that they are not an genetically disadvantaged. Another thing that is also very important to make clear is that we do not mean genetic or environmental determinism - genes do not determine your whole life course. And at the same time environment does not determine all your lifecourse. It's very complex interplay between the two. So you cannot, I think we do not propagate labelling people based on their genes or based on their family environment created. Christine Garrington  7:57 Now its early days, I think that is another thing you are keen to stress, early days in the research, but what would you say that we've learned so far? Because it seems that you have found a lot already. And why is it important we really get to grips with it and understand it? Especially in this context of inequality and wanting to close the gaps between, you know those people who might struggle in life and those people advantaged in some way.  Dilnoza Muslimova 8:22 I think what we learn from the study, is a lot of previous literature, talk about children’s endowments and how they interplay with the environment. But very few papers actually measured the endowments, and some of the measurements are mostly like birth weight. And birth weight is affected by prenatal parental investment so you don't know what is causing what. And the advantage of our study is that both measures that we use are independent of each other and his allows us to measure the contribution of each aspect of nature and nurture. So that's very interesting and very important. Yeah, and basically I underlined again what we found is that genetical disadvantage children are hampered even more great by fewer parental investments when it comes to their life long outcomes. Christine Garrington  9:13 Birth rank, genes and later life outcomes is research presented at the DIAL midterm conference in June 2019 by Dilnoza Muslimova. You can find out more about the NORFACE funded DIAL projects at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen.

Dilnoza Muslimova: Birth rank - does it make a difference?

 In Episode 10 of the Dial Podcast, Michael Grätz from the University of Stockholm talks about sibling similarity in income and what that tells us about their life chances later on.  The research, which uses Administrative Data in Sweden and is published as a Working Paper, was also presented at the DIAL mid term conference in June 2019. Transcript Michael Grätz: Siblings and their incomes – the same or different over the life course? In Episode 10 of the Dial Podcast, Michael Grätz from the University of Stockholm talks about sibling similarity in income and what that tells us about their life chances later on.  The research, which uses Administrative Data in Sweden and is published as a Working Paper, was also presented at the DIAL mid term conference in June 2019.  Christine Garrington  0:00  Welcome to DIAL, a podcast where we tune into evidence on inequality over the lifecourse. In today's episode, we're talking about sibling similarity and income over the lifecourse and across generations. Our guest is Michael Grätz from the University of Stockholm he started by explaining by looking at siblings can help us better understand how much their background and circumstances influence how they get on later in life.  Michael Grätz 0:25 So what we are interested in estimating how much the family and community background of an individual influences his and her life chances. And the siblings approach is one way to try to do that. And so siblings share many characteristics; they have the same parents, they live in the same neighbourhood, they often go to the same schools and all these factors are taking into account if we estimate how similar brothers are and how similar sisters are. Christine Garrington  0:55 So in this piece of research what specifically did you want to look at and why? Michael Grätz 0:59 So the siblings similarities approach many others have used before us. The new thing is what we are doing is we are taking a lifecourse perspective. So what we are mainly interested is whether siblings similarities varies over the lifecourse. So on the one hand there is this idea that genetic effects become stronger over the lifecourse, there is also what Christopher Chang has called luck, so there are random life events happening and they might happen more the older people become. So from that perspective you would expect that siblings become less similar to each other over the lifecourse. But there is also this idea in Sociology that there is a process of cumulative advantage. And from that perspective you would think that siblings are becoming more similar the longer they are in the labour market. Christine Garrington  1:47 And where did you get your information from? Michael Grätz 1:49 So what we are using here are papers and administrative data from Sweden. So this is tax data, actually tax records and statistics, Sweden has collected them and made them available for researchers dating back to 1968. And for that reason we can for the oldest cohort in our study - for those born in 1950s we can actually cover their income between age 18 and 60 meaning we have income information on them, on their earnings and on their income, age of 18 to age 60 every single year. Christine Garrington  2:22 And what else about this data is good? Obviously it has got the sort of information you want but presumably its huge as well right? It covers everybody? Is that right? Michael Grätz 2:29 Well it covers the Swedish population so it is covering everyone who reported their earnings and their income who reported their earnings and income to the tax authorities in that specific year.  Christine Garrington  2:39 So in that sense it is a really good source of data for you? So what was the overall picture when you compared the incomes of siblings over their lives first and foremost? Michael Grätz 2:48 So what stands out is that sibling correlations are definitely highest when they are youngest. So age 20, and 25 when you test the effect that siblings often take the same educational pathways. So meaning if they both go to university. They have low income at the beginning. If they take up some vocational education or they start work and they are lucky they have a higher income at the beginning but then of course they don’t have the income development that people have to go to university. If you look at the further lifecourse then it really depends on how we measure the information. So if you look at income at a specific age we find a decrease over the lifecourse. Meaning that siblings become more different. They become more different to each other. But if we are accumulating income meaning we are adding up the income made from one year to another, we actually find that siblings are becoming more similar in their correlated income to each other. This is not very strong but this is what we slightly find so there is a kind of U shape pattern meaning that their overall income at the end of life shows actually siblings are more similar than what was previously also thought in the literature. Christine Garrington  3:57 And did it matter whether those siblings were brothers or sisters? Michael Grätz 4:00 So it does matter for the level in the sense that the effect of family background on income was lower for women than for men. This is what other studies have also found. That is what we find here. Meaning we find lower statistical correlations and higher product correlations but the development over the lifecourse is the same for women and for men.  Christine Garrington  4:22 And what about if you came from a poorer background or a richer background? Did that matter in some way? Michael Grätz 4:26 So this is an interesting question because that there is good reason to suspect it should matter. So we are referring to the work by Bolton Connolly from Princeton University who had this idea that families who have a lot or resources are investing that in a way to make their siblings more similar and that we should also find that families from advantaged backgrounds should have more similar siblings. So there should be these differences and he actually also found these differences in one study in the United States. So this is what motivated us trying to replicate his results but we did not find evidence for this. So this is not the case. Even though there are good reasons to expect, it doesn’t affect whether siblings are, the level of sibling similarity depending on from which background they are from.  Christine Garrington  5:18 Can I ask what you make of that? Out of interest? Why the difference? Any thoughts? Michael Grätz 5:24 Yeah so maybe parental investments are not that important after all. So either, or parents don’t, if they are compensating in the way we presume they are not compensating enough. It at least not make the income of their siblings more similar. Or they maybe compensating with wealth transfers, so direct transfers. Which is not something which we are not observing in this study.   Christine Garrington  5:51 Now you looked across three different cohorts born in the 50s, 60s and 70s how did the picture differ between those cohorts? Michael Grätz 5:58 Okay to be honest that is not the very long historical perspective just having three cohorts so from them we find stability which is also what other studies have found before us. But from when we do find a change, and the change goes in the way that sisters become more similar because the three cohorts so the family background impact increases. And what this means at least that the kind of increasing female integration into the labour market and increasing gender equality is associated with a stronger effect of family background, meaning that it has mainly advantaged women who profit at least first from this increasing gender equality.  Christine Garrington  6:41 And what have you learned about sibling incomes that we didn’t know before then? And what are the important takeaways would you say from this? Michael Grätz 6:49 What we are claiming that our study shows is that it is really important to take this lifecourse perspective. And the main takeaway from this whole field of stratification research is the message that it is important to take a long, as long information lifecourse as possible. And it is important to accumulate income over, over many years. So the overall level of sibling similarity that we find for both brothers and sisters is much higher if we are looking at the whole lifecourse aged 18 to 60. And add up all this information than if we just look at five years of the lifecourse, or 10 years of the lifecourse, which is what most previous research has done. And we think that this is, this is of course speculation now but this insight is due not only for our study but the whole inequality that it is very important to take this lifecourse perspective and probably also in other countries than Sweden. Christine Garrington  7:50 Sibling Similarity and Income: a Lifecourse Perspective is research presented at the DIAL midterm conference in June 2019 by Michael Grätz. You can find out more about the NORFACE funded DIAL projects at www.dynamicsofinequality.org. Thanks for listening to this episode of our podcast, which is presented and produced by Chris Garrington and edited by Elina Kilpi-Jakonen. 

Michael Grätz: Siblings and their incomes - the same or different over the life course?

The increasing gap between rich and poor, exacerbated by the recent financial and economic crises, is a key concern for us all. The DIAL Podcast helps us better understand the causes and consequences of those inequalities, providing new evidence and insights into the complex ways in which they play out over the lifecourse. In a series of accessible audio interviews focusing on research emerging from the NORFACE funded Dynamics of Inequality Across the Lifecourse (DIAL) programme, we talk to those with an interest in getting to grips with inequality and trying to create a fairer and more equal society for all. Series 1 of the podcast is co-edited and produced by DIAL scientific co-ordinator Elina Kilpi-Jakonen and former BBC journalist, Christine Garrington of Research Podcasts.

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