Sandrine Metzger, Nadia Steiber, Anna Baranowska-Rataj, Laura Zilian: The social gradient in infant health from a couple perspective: Revisiting the heterogamy penalty hypothesis
This study examines the consequences of educational assortative mating on infant health. The homogamy premium and heterogamy penalty hypotheses suggest that couples with dissimilar educational attainment face greater stressors than their homogamous counterparts, potentially resulting in unequal infant health outcomes. Preliminary findings indicate a socioeconomic gradient at the couple level, with improved outcomes for better-educated parents. Additionally, we find evidence of distinct heterogamy effects on infant health. When both partners’ educational level is accounted for, hypogamous couples are less likely to have a low-weight baby but more likely to have an excessive birth weight and large-for-gestational-age infant compared to homogamous parents.
Christina Siegert, Nadia Steiber, Laura Zilian: The education-specific impact of first birth on poverty risk within couples: Evidence from Austrian register data
Typically, poverty risk is assessed at the household level, neglecting within-couple income inequality and the role of individual characteristics in vulnerability to poverty. However, low personal income still leaves individuals vulnerable and exposed to social risks, particularly women. By simultaneously evaluating household and individual poverty risks (with/out access to partner income), the paper enhances our understanding of economic inequality within couples and the link between parenthood and poverty. Preliminary results show a consistently low household poverty risk for couples and similar individual poverty trajectories for men. In contrast, women face a significant increase in individual poverty risk after first birth across education levels, driven by the high prevalence of part-time work.
Nadia Steiber, Erich Striessnig, Laura Zilian: Local Mating Markets and Partnership Formation: The Role of Education-Specific Mating Squeezes
The reversed gender gap in education has created structural constraints in local mating markets. The surplus of highly educated women relative to highly educated men limits their options for educationally homogamous partnerships. Previous research suggests that such education-specific mating squeezes contribute to shifting patterns of union formation, including rising proportions of hypogamous couples — where the woman has a higher level of education than the man. Consistent with previous findings, our results show that local education-specific mating squeezes increase the probability of hypogamous unions and that this effect increases with age. Our study extends these findings by incorporating interactions between age, market squeeze and market size and by testing differences in results across different definitions of local mating markets and squeeze indicators.
Lili Vargha, Nadia Steiber, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer: Fathers’ and mothers’ joint longitudinal earnings trajectories before and after first birth in Austria
This paper analyzes the long-term earnings trajectories of Austrian first-time parents three years before and twenty years after the birth of their first child from a parental dyadic perspective. After identifying typical earnings trajectories, we extend the analysis by examining how multi-trajectory membership probabilities vary with key baseline characteristics of the parental dyad and birth. While primarily explorative-descriptive, our study provides new insights on the development of earnings inequalities within and between couples after birth and how relative resources within and between couples are associated with different earnings trajectories of parents from a dynamic couple perspective.
