Suchergebnisse

Objective: This study aims to describe the educational gradient and the role of educational homogamy in divorce risk in the Czech Republic. Background: The Czech Republic underwent a social transformation in the 1990s, which resulted in a significant change in many demographic trends. In contrast, the divorce trend seems to have been less affected. My aim is to describe the evolution of the patterns of the educational gradient of divorce during the late phase of the post-communist transformation. Method: Register data on marriages contracted in 1995, 2000, and 2005 were supplemented with divorce register records up to 2020. Besides the duration of the marriage, the data contains information on the education, age, and marital status of both partners at the time of marriage. The Kaplan-Meier curves and the Cox regression are used for the analysis. Results: The risk of divorce is substantially higher for the less educated, and this holds across all three marriage cohorts observed here. Homogamous marriages are not the most stable ones. From an individual's perspective, marriage with a more educated partner shows the highest stability. Conclusion: This analysis confirmed the stability of the negative educational gradient of marriages contracted during the late phase of the post-communist transition period in the Czech Republic. It refutes the notion that the higher relative education of the woman or man in the couple destabilises partnerships.

This study examines how the public acceptance of divorce has changed in European countries in recent decades. Taking advantage of the large-scale, comparative, and long-run measurement of value orientations in the European Values Study 1981-2017 it focuses on value change connected with divorce in a macro perspective. The article explores the acceptance of divorce in three aspects: (1) it measures and compares the trends in the acceptance of divorce in various European societies between 1981 (1991) and 2017 and contrasts these trends with the data on divorce rates in these countries; (2) it explores the consistency/correlation between divorce attitudes and the affinitive value orientations associated in the broader set of values connected with the concept of the deinstitutionalisation of marriage; (3) it looks for the correlates of divorce acceptance and the changes in acceptance over time at the individual level (sex, education, cohort, family background, religiosity). Because of the descriptive nature of the research, no hypotheses are tested. The results show that divorce acceptance is rising over time in all EVS countries, and the acceptance is connected to divorce levels in given societies. Attitudes towards divorce form a consistent set of values together with other marriage deinstitutionalisation indicators. The acceptance of divorce correlates on an individual level with age, education, and religion, but surprisingly there is only weak difference between men and women.

Infertility is a problem that affects around 15% of Czech couples of reproductive age. Using data from the survey 'Marriage, Work, Family' the objective of this analysis is to identify the attitudes that Czech men and women maintain towards various strategies for overcoming infertility (adoption, different forms of assisted reproduction) and the factors that influence and shape these attitudes. The fi rst part of the analysis looks for the determinants behind attitudes towards adoption and assisted reproduction in the respondent's external characteristics. For example, education and religion were found to have a signifi cant influence. More educated respondents are more open to methods of assisted reproduction; religious respondents are more open to adoption. In terms of inner determinants (the respondent's attitude patterns) the authors, building on the preference theory proposed by Catherine Hakim, found a preference effect among women. The fi ndings are seemingly paradoxical: of three groups of women (work-centred, home-centred, and adaptive) it is work-centred women (and the partners of work-centred women) who are most likely to take various infertility strategies into consideration. The third part of the analysis – an analysis of the external determinants of attitudes towards infertility strategies – revealed that in some cases attitudes are influenced by the characteristics of the partner more than by the respondent's own characteristics – in particular, the woman's attitudes are shaped more by the characteristics of her partner than by her own characteristics.

This article deals with the relationship between educational homogamy and educational mobility in 29 European countries. It answers three interrelated questions: (1) Is there any relationship between educational mobility and educational homogamy? (2) Does educational homogamy diverge from educational mobility (negative relationship) or does educational heterogamy strengthen educational mobility (positive relationship)? (3) If there is any positive relationship, do educational mobility and educational heterogamy indicate the level of educational inequality to the same degree? To answer these questions the authors use data from three waves of the European Social Survey (2002, 2004 and 2006). The answers are given in absolute (percentages) as well as in relative measures (log-multiplicative effects). The results show that there is a positive relationship between educational mobility and educational heterogamy. For all countries analysed, relative educational heterogamy is a stronger indicator of educational inequalities than relative educational mobility. The systematic deviation of educational heterogamy from educational mobility is explained by a number of factors that the authors discuss in the last part of the article.