February 25, 2014 | News

New Research Group on Lifecourse, Social Policy, and Family

The MPIDR has launched a new research group, focusing in the main on the interplay between social policy and familial behavior. The group is led by Michaela Kreyenfeld.

Family structures in Europe have changed drastically over the past decades. People are postponing family formation to later ages, marriage intensities are declining, and increasing numbers of couples separate or get divorced. “We want to investigate these changes and their consequences,” says research group leader Michaela Kreyenfeld.

The group, named “Lifecourse, Social Policy, and Family”, researches into the interplay between social policies and family behavior, analyzing their dynamics in eastern and western Germany and comparing them with those in other European countries. Research is done from the so-called life-course perspective. For instance, the group looks at the life-course stage at which people form a family, at the spacing between births, and at the sequencing of life-course events, such as the extent to which first birth is preceded by marriage and stable employment is seen as a prerequisite to family formation and enlargement.

From 2005 to 2012, sociologist Michaela Kreyenfeld was Junior Professor at the University of Rostock and Deputy Head of the Laboratory Economic and Social Demography at the MPIDR. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Family Research and the Journal Comparative Population Studies (CPOS). In February 2014, she has been appointed Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.