Collection: Longitudinal and Life Course Studies Editors’ Choice
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Editors' Choice Collection Longitudinal and Life Course Studies
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This study focuses on the constitution of financial reserves in Switzerland from a longitudinal perspective. Personal income after retirement derives from financial reserves whose constitution depends both on positional factors, such as sex and birth cohorts, and processual factors, such as occupational trajectories, in the institutional context of the Swiss pension system (structural factors). We hypothesise that some processual, positional and structural factors interact with each other to shape financial reserves available in old age. We assess this set of factors and their interactions using the occupational trajectory types stemming from optimal matching analysis (OMA) combined with the hierarchical clustering and regression tree methods. We used the retrospective biographic data SHARELIFE gathered during the third wave of the SHARE survey in 2009. The results show that occupational trajectories are influential factors accounting for much of the financial reserves available in later life. However, these processual factors interact with positional factors such as sex and birth cohort. The retirement schemes generalised in Switzerland during the period under consideration add up to the effect of positional factors on the constitution of financial reserves.
A large-scale crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, has the potential to affect non-response in cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys. This study utilises a longitudinal survey, conducted prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, to examine the factors associated with participation in longitudinal surveys during the COVID-19 period, and how this has changed from prior to the pandemic. We find that a number of demographic groups are more likely to be non-responders to COVID-19 surveys, despite having completed pre-COVID surveys, as well as a number of other economic and personality factors. Reassuringly though, there were many more factors that did not have an association. The findings also highlight that two simple questions (with a low time cost) on subjective survey experience early in the pandemic were highly useful in predicting future survey participation. These findings can help to support survey practitioners and data collection companies to develop more robust response improvement strategies during the COVID-19 period.
This study examines whether poverty becomes more meaningful for young people as they move from youth to adulthood; therefore, the main hypothesis is that poverty becomes increasingly detrimental to individual life satisfaction as young people grow older and – at the same time – enter working life and establish their own households or families. The empirical analysis uses German household panel data and applies indicators for income poverty and material deprivation for a sample of 15- to 29-year-old young men and women. Results show that few facets of poverty impair life satisfaction in youth, and indicators increasingly show significant negative effects as people age. Changes in employment status and household context in the transition to adulthood cannot explain the age differences. Findings indicate that age is an independent reference point for young people in the transition to adulthood. Results also suggest that a more critical discussion is required on the significance of poverty and its measurement during the transition from youth to adulthood.