Arbeitsbereich

Bevölkerung und Gesundheit

Auf einen Blick Projekte Publikationen Team

Projekt

The Interplay of Family Dynamics and Health (Dissertation)

Philipp Dierker, Mikko Myrskylä, Mine Kühn, Sanna Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist

Ausführliche Beschreibung

This PhD project uses longitudinal data to examine the transition into as well as living in different family living arrangements and how this relates to the health of family members. A particular focus is on single parents, their entry into single parenthood, living as a single parent with child, repartnering and thus leaving single parenthood. How these transitions relate to health has not been clearly established by previous research because the question of selection or causation often remains unclear. This project thus addresses not only health outcomes of different transitions and family living arrangement but also their health-related predictors.

Our analyses are based primarily on panel survey and register-based data from European countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, and Finland). We apply different types of fixed effects regression models, which can be used to identify the effects of family transitions at the individual level while taking individual characteristics into account.

The first study investigates repartnering among single mothers in Germany and the UK and the associated trajectories of mental health and life satisfaction. It covers entry into single motherhood and the effects of repartnering on mental health and life satisfaction. This study covers exit from the single parent period. The second study, by contrast, focuses on entry into single parenthood, i.e., adolescents who entered the period of single parenthood due to parental separation. We examine the impact of genetic factors on the health-related risk behaviors of these adolescents and how these behaviors are shaped by parental separation. To this end, we analyze data on German twins. A third study, based on Finnish register data, looks at entry into single parenthood, too, but focuses on how this may be caused by the children’s health problems in adolescence. We use inpatient and outpatient hospital data as indicators of children’s chronic somatic conditions and mental disorder.

Our results contribute to understanding the impact of family on health and vice versa. They help to identify particularly vulnerable groups of people and types of families and can thus present policy recommendations to counteract this vulnerability. By considering different national contexts with varying levels of generosity of family support, the project also helps to estimate the impact of institutional setting on the interplay of family and health.

Schlagworte:

Familienverhalten, Gesundheitsversorgung, Public Health, Medizin und Epidemiologie, Lebensverlauf