Welfare states accompany us from the cradle to the grave. They shape our decisions, trajectories, opportunities and the risks we face, across all stage. In youth and young adulthood, education systems shape educational decisions, the chances at labour market entry and early employment trajectories.

 

But, does the influence of educational systems also affect life course decisions in young adulthood that come after education completion and labour market entry? Do they work across domains and shape family transitions, such as leaving the parental home, the transition into a stable partnership, becoming a parent? Together with Christian Imdorf (University of Hanover), I have investigated the regional educational policies in Switzerland, and their association with the three family transitions.

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In an article jointly authored with Diana Galos, we show that highger expenditures for childcare are associated with higher likelihoods of providing grandchild care among all grandparents, regardless of their employment situation or income. Formal chilcare provision can thus work as an enabler, but also an equalizer for intergenerational support. This association is mirrored in the finding for financial transfers, where we find the same narrowing income-gap in providing intergenerational support to one's adult children.

 

In a single-authord article published in JESP, I show that welfare states' expenditures for formal childcare are associated with voluntary and pre-mature labour markeet exits among grandmothers. Surprisingly, I found that it was the grandmothers in those welfare states with higher expenditures per child on the age of 6 that are more likely to leave the labour market if they started looking after a grandchild regularly. This article has come a long way; its initial idea was conceived in 2019, when I was a visiting scholar at CESo at KU Leuven (still indebted to Prof. Wim van Oorschot for inviting me!). 

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Publications

Bertogg, Ariane, and Christian Imdorf. 2024. Education Systems as Life Course Policies? The Example of Subnational Educational Regimes and Young Adults’ Family Transitions. Journal of Social Policy Research. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/zsr-2023-0013

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 Bertogg, Ariane, and Diana Galos. 2024. Double (Dis)Advantage: The Cumulative Role of Parental Resources and the Institutional Context in Intergenerational Time and Money Transfers. Social Forces. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soae019

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Bertogg, Ariane. 2023. Needs or Obligations? Childcare Policies, Family Norms, and Grandparents’ Labour Market Participation. Journal of European Social Policy, 33(1): 17-33. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/095892872211156

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