Volume 44 - Article 1 | Pages 1–48  

Simulating family life courses: An application for Italy, Great Britain, Norway, and Sweden

By Maria Winkler-Dworak, Eva Beaujouan, Paola Di Giulio, Martin Spielauer

Abstract

Background: Family patterns in Western countries have changed substantially across birth cohorts. The spread of unmarried cohabitation, the decline and postponement of marriage and fertility, and the rise in nonmarital births, partnership instability, and repartnering lead to an increasing diversity in family life courses.

Objective: In this paper we demonstrate how to set up a tool to explore family life trajectories. This tool models the changing family patterns, taking into account the complex inter-relationships between childbearing and partnership processes.

Methods: We build a microsimulation model parameterised using retrospective partnership and childbearing data. The data cover women born since 1940 in Italy, Great Britain, and two Scandinavian countries (Norway and Sweden), three significantly different cultural and institutional contexts of partnering and childbearing in Europe.

Results: We guide readers through the modelling of individual life events to obtain a set of aggregate estimates, providing information on the power, technical structure, and underlying assumptions of microsimulations. Validation of the simulated family life courses against their real-world equivalents shows that the simulations not only closely replicate observed childbearing and partnership processes, but also provide high quality predictions when compared to more recent fertility indicators.

Conclusions: Using observed population estimates to systematically validate the results both validates our model and increases confidence that microsimulations satisfactorily replicate the behaviour of the original population.

Contribution: We create and validate a microsimulation model that can be used not only to explore mechanisms throughout the family life course but also to set up scenarios and predict future family patterns.

Author's Affiliation

• Maria Winkler-Dworak - Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Austria EMAIL
• Eva Beaujouan - Universität Wien, Austria EMAIL
• Paola Di Giulio - Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Austria EMAIL
• Martin Spielauer - Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Austria EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Delayed first births and completed fertility across the 1940–1969 birth cohorts
Volume 48 - Article 15

The changing pattern of cohabitation: A sequence analysis approach
Volume 40 - Article 42

Cohort fertility decline in low fertility countries: Decomposition using parity progression ratios
Volume 38 - Article 25

Educational differences in timing and quantum of childbearing in Britain: A study of cohorts born 1940−1969
Volume 33 - Article 26

Ageing dynamics of a human-capital-specific population: A demographic perspective
Volume 31 - Article 44

Neither single, nor in a couple. A study of living apart together in France
Volume 21 - Article 4

Intergenerational family ties and the diffusion of cohabitation in Italy
Volume 16 - Article 14

On the tempo and quantum of first marriages in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland: Changes in mean age and variance
Volume 10 - Article 9

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