VID Colloquium
Family disruption in Sweden: New possibilities and preliminary results from administrative registers
Elizabeth Thomson, Stockholm University
Date: Mon, 6 July 2009 , Time: 14:00-15:00
A new database, Sweden over Time: Activities and Relations (STAR), affords possibilities for studying change and variation in family formation and dissolution over the past 40 years. My presentation includes a brief review of the possibilities of Nordic register data for family research, with examples from studies of fertility and intergenerational mobility. I will provide an overview of the STAR database and describe early experience with and results from a study of educational differences in non-union and non-marital childbearing and parental disruption.
About the presenter
Elizabeth Thomson (Ph.D., sociology, University of Washington USA, 1979) is Professor of Demography, Stockholm University, and Professor of Sociology Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She directs the Linnaeus Center for Social Policy and Family Dynamics in Europe as well as other research and graduate training activities of the Stockholm University Demographic Unit. She has conducted research on couple childbearing decisions, family structure and child well-being, sterilization, stepfamily childbearing and adolescent sexuality. In recent years, much of her research has focused on comparative European family demography. Current projects include the relationship between education and the family life course in Europe, family structure and child well-being in Sweden, and the implications of union instability for fertility. She has held numerous grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and several Swedish agencies, including awards from the Swedish Research Council for long-term support of leading researchers and for the Linnaeus Center. Professor Thomson is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.