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Can an estimate of the intergenerational elasticity (IGE) be interpreted as a measure of inequality of opportunity (IOp)? If parental income is the only childhood circumstance, then the answer is yes. However, parental income is one of many potential circumstances that can shape IOp. These circumstances can influence the offspring’s income indirectly – by influencing parental income – or directly, bypassing the IGE altogether. I develop a model to decompose the interaction between childhood circumstances, parental income and offspring income. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the United States, I find that childhood circumstances account for 55% of the IGE for individual earnings and 53% for family income, with parental education explaining over a third of those shares. Furthermore, the IGE misses a large part of the influence of circumstances: only 45% of the influence of parental education on the offspring’s income goes through parental income (36% for earnings).

Educational policies are widely recognized as the means par excellence to equalize opportunities among children with different social and family backgrounds and to promote intergenerational mobility. In this chapter, we focus on the French case and we apply the opportunity equalization criterion proposed by Andreoli, Havnes, and Lefranc (2019) for evaluating the effect of rising compulsory schooling requirements in secondary education. Our results show that such education expansion has a limited redistributive effect on students’ earnings distribution. Nonetheless, we provide evidence of opportunity equalization among groups of students defined by family background circumstances.

Family life can be seriously disrupted when a mother is imprisoned. The separation changes and often reduces the type, frequency and quality of contact that can be achieved between family members, and especially for children when their mothers were their primary carers and living with them before her imprisonment. In England and Wales, prisoners are permitted contact with children and families through prison visits, telephone contact and letter-writing through the post, and in some prisons via email. Despite the recent policy interest in supporting prisoners' family ties, research has highlighted the challenges that families and prisoners face using these communicative mechanisms. Building on this, the chapter contributes new knowledge by shifting the lens to explore how family members construct and adjust their practices to promote mother–child contact during maternal imprisonment.

The empirical study draws on semistructured interviews with mothers in prison and family members (caregivers) to children of female prisoners. Guided by a ‘family practices’ theoretical framework (Morgan, 2011), the findings show innovative adjustments, a willingness to make sacrifices and alternative routes to improve contact utilised by mothers and caregivers to prioritise mother–child contact. We see the strength, resilience and autonomy shown by family members to promote their relationships in spite of communicative barriers. There are important lessons to be learned from the families' lived experience for policy and practice, which, without due and genuine consideration, might further hinder opportunities for mother–child contact during maternal imprisonment.

Once a week, almost one in ten Swedish children moves between two homes, replacing the routines and practices of one household with those of another. They are children in dual residence arrangements, dividing their time equally between two households after parental separation. Being on the move physically, as well as emotionally and relationally, is a part of their everyday lives. In this chapter, the author addresses children’s perspectives on living their everyday lives in two households and belonging to two homes and how they make sense of regularly shifting between different locations and (perhaps) contrasting family practices, rules and routines. Children’s accounts reveal how moving becomes a routine everyday practice, yet the regular change is perceived differently by different children. While highly valued by some, others find it difficult to handle the emotional stress of constantly leaving one parent behind, or the practical juggling of packing and moving. In the children’s accounts, they reveal how they take part in shaping their dual family lives, post-separation. The chapter draws on qualitative interviews with 20 children and young people living in dual residence arrangements. By using family practices as the analytical focus when analysing children’s accounts, the aim is to understand how everyday life is shaped by mobility. It is argued that the practices associated with dual residence are deeply embedded in physical, emotional and relational dimensions of mobility.

This article identifies children’s rights as a neglected area in citizenship literature, both in socio-legal scholarship and in British nationality case law. It analyzes reasons for this neglect and posits that there exists a dichotomy in approaches to the wellbeing of children in the UK. The characterization of children’s interests and subsequent obligations owed by states to children are different in nationality law from other areas of law, notably, family law. Through our case study of the registration of children as British citizens, we argue that in the UK formal legal membership may appear achievable “in the books” but remains elusive in “law in action.” Children’s interests should be just as central to citizenship studies and nationality case law as to family law cases. A new approach to acquisition of British citizenship by children, with the best interests of the child as a critical evaluative principle at the heart of decision making, will usher in a new era. In the absence of such reconceptualization, children remain passive subjects of nationality law and their voices are unheard in processes of acquisition of citizenship.

In this chapter, I investigated how challenges (life events) are negotiated within families according to gender roles and their effect on marriage quality, life satisfaction, and psychological resilience in a nonclinical sample of heterosexual couples (N=159), age 23–78 (M=45.4, SD=11.2), with children (n=127) or childfree (n=32). Specifically, I accounted for the individual’s ability to share “hurt feelings” and foster intimacy within the couple, thus strengthening resilience and improving life satisfaction and hypothesized that the impact of negative life events on both relationship quality and life satisfaction could depend on the resilience levels of each partner and their ratio according to gender roles. Results confirmed the hypothesis and showed significant gender differences in the impact of negative life events on relationship quality, life satisfaction, ability to share hurt feelings, fear of intimacy, and resilience levels. Moreover, the ratio of the partner’s individual resilience affected the dependent variables differently by gender, its level interacted with the age of the couple’s first child (range: 2–54, mean: 21.4, SD: 10.4) and strongly depended on the occupation of the parents.

This chapter reviews the status of Education For All (EFA) in China and identifies four gaps: between rural and urban residents, between residents of geographic regions, between ethnicity groups, and between the genders. It turns to examine the educational situation and interests of girls weighed down by the crushing burden of multiple disadvantages in “left-behind” Western China. Based on analysis of macro-level socio-economic and educational conditions, along with rich micro-level data on girls’ vigorous pursuit of education, the authors argue that the changing conditions of rural girls’ lives and their education can best be understood from a critical empowerment perspective. Summarizing the global discourse and cross national evidence on the benefits of girls’ education, the chapter and looks beyond a utilitarian perspective and argues for the cogency of a critical empowerment framework. Filled with telling stories and case studies of Han Chinese, Tibetan, and Muslim girls, this chapter proposes that prioritizing girls’ education in Western China is crucial and required for achieving the MDG of gender parity. Even though girls are often stranded by family financial conditions, their actions and ideas seeing education as their future reflect a changing gender identity and role in the family and society. The fieldwork suggests that educating girls promotes localized development, reduces dangerous levels of economic gaps and social instability, but also advances hard to measure effects: personal and civil empowerment, and sustainable, harmonious cultural change – as well as MDG.

The contradictions of the transition period in Moldova promoted transformations of the structure and functions of the family. Today the term “family” is more extended, including new forms in comparison with previous generations. Under current conditions there is an increased need to understand family issues. The family is not considered as a separate cell and closed system; rather it represents a problem of national interests. Strengthening the family is important, but its realization is not easy. Problems have to be solved at the society and family level. At the society level, there is a need for systematic research on family issues, for development and implementation of family support strategy, family consultations, and family life educational programs for youth. At the family level, the focus needs to be on increasing the quality of relationships, developing a democratic style of childrearing, and restructuring the gender roles.

Young adults are living and working in uncertain economic climates and increasingly exposed to precarious work. Are preferences for job security and actual job stability a result of proximal conditions, or do experiences in adolescence also play a role? The adolescent’s environment and experiences may help explain differences in preferences with regards to stable work, as well as work outcomes in early adulthood.

In this chapter, I use data from the Youth Development Study (YDS) to test three facets of the adolescent experience between ages 14 and 18 – parental work and educational characteristics, adolescents’ academic achievement, and youth employment – as factors shaping (1) respondents’ preferences for stable employment, (2) respondents’ perceived job insecurity, and (3) respondents’ likelihood of being in nonstandard work in early adulthood, age 31–32, approximately 15 years later.

Adolescent experiences and environments are related to young adults’ preferences for stable employment, likelihood of being in nonstandard work, and likelihood of reporting job insecurity in early adulthood, suggesting the significance of early life experiences as well as the importance of intergenerational transmission processes for the early adult years.

This study points to the important role of adolescent experiences in initiating a trajectory of work preferences and attainment.