Rense Nieuwenhuis » Propositions

Proposition 10: The extraordinary lies within the curve of normality

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 11:00:21 +0000

Today is the day I will defend my dissertation. And what better way to end this series with the final proposition of my dissertation:

The extraordinary lies within the curve of normality

This phrase has been the motto of my website for years, and still I have no complete understanding of its meaning. One interpretation is that being different is an inherent part of what we consider ‘normal’, meaning that if we observe differences this should not result in judgement. My second interpretation is that even within what we consider ‘normal’ there are many extraordinary, wonderful, and inspiring things to experience and learn.

For today, however, the meaning of this phrase is completely clear. Once you start your PhD, and as long as you keep on going, defending your differentiation is an event that is an inherently normal thing to do (if you make it to the end, that is), but (in the Netherlands) you do it only once and it is a very special event. It is the connection between this exceptional event and the many normal days working on a dissertation.

And while we’re at it, obtaining my PhD will be the culmination of four years of hard work, but also four years of many great experiences. Every day was special, one way or the other, which today will be underlined by my defense ceremony!

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This is a series on the 10 propositions that are part of my PhD dissertation. These propositions are a Dutch tradition to highlight key findings of a dissertation and some additional insights by the author. My dissertation is titled “Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD countries, 1975-2005″ and I will defend my dissertation on January 10 2014. So, this series is also a count down. Find out more about my dissertation.

The image with this post is a picture of the best research award I won last year at the Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies (IGS).

Proposition 9: Dutch universities (used to) pay PhD candidates not to act like students.

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 11:00:04 +0000

During my PhD I have been the president of the PhD Network of the University of Twente (P-NUT). This network attempts to connect, inform and to represent PhD candidates.One of the key debates during my term as president (and still current) was the introduction of bursary candidates in the Netherlands.

Currently, most PhD candidates (some candidates have foreign bursaries) are employed by the university. In return for their salary they provide some administrative services and / or do some teaching. The introduction of PhD candidates on bursaries would possibly reduce their income, but additionally they do not save for their pension, lack benefits when they’re ill and are not entitled to parental leave.

These plans do not comply with my understanding of the function of doing a PhD, as formulated in the acknowledgements of my own dissertation:

Doing a PhD represents several years of supervised training, developing oneself to become a researcher capable of independently contributing to, and participating in, a scientific discipline. Contributing to a scientific discipline means that a PhD candidate is supervised to create scientific products of the highest possible quality, and does so in an increasingly independent manner. Participating in a scientific discipline entails presenting these scientific products to others, frequently discussing these with colleagues, and collaborating with representatives of that discipline.

Dutch PhD candidates are highly regarded internationally. Hans Clevers, the current president of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, argued in an interview that PhDs from the Netherlands are well regarded internationally, because they are independent, creative and critical. That’s how we currently train PhDs: as young, independent professionals. Let’s not break that system by making students out of PhDs, or by overemphasizing on efficiency.

Dutch universities (used to) pay PhD candidates not to act like students.

Proposition 8: Critics of sociology stating that the discipline has no ‘excess empirical content’, ignore efforts of methodological rigor without which ‘anything goes’

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 11:00:09 +0000

Critics of sociology stating that the discipline has no ‘excess empirical content’, ignore efforts of methodological rigor without which ‘anything goes’

It is sometimes said that sociology is particularly well fit to kick in open doors. It is a response to sociological research findings is that people think they already knew the outcome of this study. Sure, sometimes this may be the case, but most often one may have a suspicion about the outcomes – rather than actual knowledge.

In philosophical sense, this criticism boils down to arguin that most sociological theories have no excess content: they have nothing new to add to what we already knew. One argued that is often heard is that in sociology so many methods are used that one can always find a method – or alter one – to support one’s own ideas: sociology would lack methodological rigor.

The term ‘excess empirical content’ was coined by Imre Lakatos. In my dissertation I write about my philosophy of science:

Based on Lakatosian philisophy of science, the interaction between opportunities and interests means that we must reject explanations of women’s employment solely based on the concept of opportunities. Lakatos argued that: “For the sophisticated falsificationist a scientific the- ory T is falsified if and only if another theory T’ has been proposed with the following characteristics: (1) T’ has excess empirical content over T: that is, it predicts novel facts, that is, facts improbable in the light of, or even forbidden, by T; (2) T’ explains the previous success of T, that is, all the unrefuted content of T is included (within the limits of observational error) in the content of T’; and (3) some of the excess content of T’ is corroborated.” (Lakatos, 1978, p. also see: Levels & Nieuwenhuis, 2011).

Paul Feyerabend argued for methodological pluralism, stating that ‘anything goes’. This has been interpreted as indicating that any method should be endorsed, or tolerated. I do not think this is a correct interpretation. I interpret Feyerabend as suggesting that one should look at problems in different ways – and see whether news ideas reject old conceptions of truth. The methodological rigor is then found in the attempt to relate the findings based on different methodologies to each other – within a common theoretical framework.

In my dissertation I have closed three open doors, so to say, or rejected (at least) three theories:

Pettit and Hook (2009) argued that (parental) leave is a mechanism of exclusion of women from the labor market. In my analyses I found that short-term leave includes women on the labor market, and only very long periods of leave exclude women from the labor market
As argued in the quote above, I reject explanations of the outcomes of family policies solely based on opportunities, as it is the interaction of opportunities and women’s interest in employment that drive the outcomes of family policies.
The incomplete revolution thesis by Esping-Andersen, who argued that increasing rates of women’s employment resulted in higher degrees of inequality between households. I could not confirm this claim, and rather argued that “The conditions for women’s earnings to increase inequality between households are hard to meet“.

Proposition 7

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 11:00:57 +0000

Better one control variable in your mind, than 10 in your model.

A key challenge in country-comparative research is the limited number of (control) variables that can be accounted for simultaneously. But then again, often too many variables are included in models anyway, I think. Without critical thought, such sheer amount of control variables may do more harm than good.

Recently, a good example was discussed by Andrew Gelman – who argued against controlling for post-treatment variables. Gelman responded to a study finding that “The more money that parents provide for higher education, the lower the grades their children earn.” It turned out that the study included a very important post-treatment control: “whether the student is employed during school”. So, the most plausible causal mechanism (parents pay -> students don’t have to work and therefore have more time to study –> better grades) is completely blocked out, therefore unable to drive the parameter estimate.

In my own research, combining person-level and country-level data, I was limited in the number of control variables I could have. On the person-level, this was due to the lack of comparable measurements across countries and over time. At the country-level, on the other hand, I could have selected for quite an abundance of country-level control variables. However, the number of country-year level observations was still relatively low – and the specified regression models were quite complex. Hence, the number of controls had to be limited. I decided to control only for labour market structure in tested the effects of family policy outcomes. In my mind, it makes sense to control for factors directly shaping the employment opportunities of women when investigating the effects of policies also affecting these opportunities.

Technically, it has become easy to estimate highly complex regression models with many variables. This often makes a lot of sense to do, but if one is not careful the results become uninterpretable, or the correct interpretation of a parameter estimate changes – for instance because of controlling for a post-treatment variable. In any case: controls can be great but only after careful consideration.

Proposition 6 – Country-comparative questions are sometimes best answered by using person-level data

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:00:45 +0000

Country-comparative questions are sometimes best answered by using person-level data.

The goal of my dissertation was to answer country-comparative questions and yet I have consistently used person-level (and household-level) data to answer these questions. As this inevitably results in all kinds of complexities, one can wonder why I took this road.

Clearly, some of the answers I arrived at were suggested by previous studies as well. Indeed, based on analyses of country-level data we had quite a firm understanding that reconciliation policies improve women’s employment. But there are several disadvantages in using country-level data, that were summarized by Kittel using the term ‘Crazy Methodology’ (see Chapter 1 of my dissertation for more a more detailed discussion on this topic).

However, the most important reason for me to use person-level data to answer country-comparative research is to provide stronger tests of hypotheses on family policy outcomes and to answer new country-comparative questions. This led to various new insights. To name three:

Whereas family policies typically affect only mothers, a labor market characterized by a large service sector stimulates the employment of all women: both mothers and women without children. With only country-level data, we could not have made this distinction.
Reconciliation policies were found to be more effective among higher educated women (see also proposition 3)
Reconciliation policies were found to reduce earnings inequality both within and between households, and financial support policies were found to increase these inequalities. This is in line with proposition 5: Family policy arrangements that facilitate smaller earnings inequality within households also reduce inequality between households.

Thus, country-comparative questions are sometimes best answered by using person-level data, particularly when dealing with differences within countries.

Proposition 5: Family policy arrangements that facilitate smaller earnings inequality within households also reduce inequality between households

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 11:00:35 +0000

In previous Chapters of my dissertation I found that reconciliation policies close the motherhood-employment gap, and that financial support policies increase this gap. Paid leave was also found to be more effective among higher educated women. These findings, as well as an increasing body of literature on stratified outcomes of family policies, may suggest that family policies that stimulate women’s employment may have the unintended consequence of increasing inequality between households.

On the other hand, the findings in Chapter 5 suggested that women’s earnings have a strong tendency to decrease inequality between households. Our analyses showed that family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment women contributed a larger share of total household earnings, and earnings inequality among women was relatively low. Indeed, it women’s earnings were found to attenuate inequality between households to a larger extent in countries with extensive reconciliation policies and limited financial support policies. Countries with family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment and consequently smaller earnings inequalities within households also contribute to smaller in- equalities between households.

The Chapter thus gave rise to the following proposition:

Family policy arrangements that facilitate smaller earnings inequality within households also reduce inequality between households.

The complete abstract of this Chapter reads:

This Chapter examines to what extent family policies have affected earnings inequality within and between coupled households. In Chapter 5 cross-country variation was found in the degree to which women’s earnings attenuate earnings inequality between households. In this Chapter we explain this variation with reconciliation policies and financial support policies. We used person-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS, 2013) on 572,222 coupled households, covering the period from 1981 to 2005 in 18 OECD countries. These data were combined with country-level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database (Gauthier, 2010). In countries with extensive reconciliation policies women contributed a larger share of total household earnings, and earnings inequality among women was relatively low. In societies with extensive financial support policies, women contributed a smaller share to total household earnings, and inequality among the earnings of women was relatively high. Women’s earnings were found to attenuate inequality between households to a larger extent in countries with extensive reconciliation policies and limited financial support policies. Countries with family policy arrangements that facilitate women’s employment and consequently smaller earnings inequalities within households also contribute to smaller inequalities between households.

Proposition 4: The conditions for women’s earnings to increase inequality between households are hard to meet

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 11:00:59 +0000

The conditions for women’s earnings to increase inequality between households are hard to meet.

With women’s increasing participation on the labour market, the question has often been raised how their earnings have affected earnings inequality between households. Early during my sociology training I learned that the inequality between households would be bigger than inequality between individuals. I thought it made sense, as coupled household with two earners can accumulate more resources (e.g. earnings) than a single person (household) can. Add educational homogamy to the mix, and there is a strong reason to expect women’s earnings to increase inequality between households. Hence, I was not surprised when I read Esping-Andersen’s statement that the “conditions required for an equalizing effect [of women’s earnings] are quite steep”.

It is, however, a “common misconception” (Lam, 1997) that a positive correlation between spouses’ earnings is a sufficient condition for women’s earnings to increase inequalities between households. Instead, the contribution of women’s earnings to inequality between households depends on the correlation between spouses’ earnings, the earnings inequality among women (relative to inequality among men), and the share of women’s earnings in total household earnings. It turned out, that the correlation between spouses’ earnings was positive, but not high enough for women’s earnings to increase the inequality between households.

So, that is why this Chapter concludes by stating that the conditions for women’s earnings to increase inequality between households are hard to meet.

The abstract of this Chapter reads:

In this Chapter we show that women’s earnings attenuate inequality between coupled households, even though the earnings of spouses are positively correlated. We use data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS, 2013) on 572,222 coupled households, covering the period from 1981 to 2005 in 18 OECD countries. Three trends are described. Firstly, over time women’s earnings increasingly contributed to total household earnings, thereby increasing equality within households. Secondly, the positive correlation between spouses’ earnings increased over time. Thirdly, earnings inequality among women declined. With a counter-factual decomposition technique on earnings inequality, we show that the combined effect of these trends was that women’s earn- ings increasingly attenuated earnings inequality between households. The trend towards women’s earnings increasingly attenuating the inequality between households was mainly driven by decreasing inequal- ity among women. If inequality among women had not declined as it did in recent decades, inequality between households would have been 25% higher than it actually was in 2005.

Proposition 3: People don’t just act out of interest; they also need opportunities

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 11:00:27 +0000

People don’t just act out of interest; they also need opportunities.

This third proposition refers to one of the key theoretical contributions of my dissertation, tested in Chapter 4. A lot of research on (family) policy outcomes only focus on the characteristics of policy. In my case, my hypotheses in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of my dissertation were derived from the assumption that policies provide opportunities.

In Chapter 4 of my dissertation I argue that opportunities for employment will only be effective for those (women) with an interest in employment. In other words, the outcomes of opportunities are dependent on the interests of the actors.

From this I derived the hypothesis that reconciliation policies are more effective among higher educated women. This hypothesis was supported by the empirical analyses. The hypothesis that financial support policies were more effective among lower educated women, however, had to be rejected, although it was shown that financial support policies suppress the employment of mothers of all educational levels.

The summary of the Chapter reads:

In Chapter 2 we found that the size of the motherhood-employment gap was reduced by reconciliation policies and increased by financial support policies for families. In this Chapter, we answered the question of to what extent the outcomes of reconciliation policies and financial support policies differ between more and less educated mothers. Thus, we challenged the theoretical assumption held in Chapters 2 and 3 that all mothers are equally affected by family policies. Our data were obtained from the ‘Comparative Motherhood-Employment Gap Trend File’, combined with country-level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database (Gauthier & Bortnik, 2001). The data covered 17 OECD countries, the period from 1980 to 1999, and 116,874 observations on individual women living in partnered households. The data were analysed using multilevel logistic regression. We found that paid leave – a reconciliation policy – reduces the motherhood-employment gap more strongly among more educated women than among the less educated.

Proposition 2: It is too simple to only think of childcare leave as a mechanism of inclusion of women in the labour market, as it can also be a mechanism of exclusion.

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 11:00:22 +0000

It is too simple to only think of childcare leave as a mechanism of inclusion of women in the labour market, as it can also be a mechanism of exclusion.

With this proposition I respond to various studies addressing the question whether there is such a thing as too long childcare leave. Moreover, I address how it is possible that I found (in Chapter 2 of my dissertation) that leave increases mothers’ employment, whereas other authors (most prominently Pettit and Hook, in their Gendered Tradeoffs Book) found that leave reduces mothers’ employment. I not only hypothesize a curvilinear effect of leave with short periods of leave improving women’s employment and (overly) long periods of leave reducing women’s employment, but also suggest several methodological improvements.

I tested the hypotheses using the Comparative Motherhood-Employment Gap Trend File on 192,484 individual women, 305 country-years, and 18 countries, combined with country- level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database. The abstract reads:

In Chapter 2 we found that longer childcare leave facilitates women’s employment by reducing the size of the motherhood-employment gap. In this Chapter we follow up on this finding and test whether women’s employment is facilitated in societies with short-term childcare leave but negatively affected in societies with very long periods of child- care leave. We start by stating that this ‘long-leave question’ has not yet been satisfactorily answered. We argued that to correctly answer the long-leave question (1.) the relationship between duration of leave and employment of women should be explicitly hypothesised as being curvilinear and (2.) childcare leave should be expected to affect only mothers, not women without children. Based on this we formulated the long-leave hypothesis: In countries with short periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is smaller than in countries with no childcare leave, but in countries with long periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is larger than in countries with short periods of leave. In addition, we argued that to test the long-leave hypothesis one should use data in which countries are observed repeatedly over time, and one should evaluate for the presence of influential data. This can be done using the ‘Comparative Motherhood-Employment Gap Trend File’ on 192,484 individual women, 305 country-years, and 18 countries, combined with country-level data from the Comparative Maternity, Parental, and Childcare Database (Gauthier & Bortnik, 2001). We found that in countries with short periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is smaller than in countries with no childcare leave, while in countries with long periods of childcare leave the motherhood-employment gap is bigger than in countries with short periods of leave.

The findings, thus, indeed show that long periods of leave exclude women from the labour market, but it was also shown that relatively short periods of childcare leave include women into the labour market. So, leave works as intended, but it can be overdone.

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This is a series on the 10 propositions that are part of my PhD dissertation. These propositions are a Dutch tradition to highlight key findings of a dissertation and some additional insights by the author. My dissertation is titled “Family Policy Outcomes: Combining Institutional and Demographic Explanations of Women’s Employment and Earnings Inequality in OECD countries, 1975-2005″ and I will defend my dissertation on January 10 2014. So, this series is also a count down. Find out more about my dissertation.

Proposition 1: Although both are family policies, reconciliation policies facilitate women’s employment while financial support policies suppress women’s employment

Rense Nieuwenhuis — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 11:00:10 +0000

It is a Dutch tradition that a PhD dissertation contains a leaflet with propositions. I have 10 such propositions, and during the countdown towards my very own PhD defense, on January 10th, I am presenting one each day.

Proposition 1: Although both are family policies, reconciliation policies facilitate women’s employment while financial support policies suppress women’s employment.

The first proposition corresponds to the second Chapter in my dissertation, and provides the first test of a crucial argument in my work: reconciliation policies have markedly different effects on women’s employment than financial support policies to families with children. Indeed, I did find in this Chapter that reconciliation policies close / reduce the size of the motherhood-employment gap, while financial support policies increase the size of the motherhood-employment gap.

This study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, and recently gained some exposure on Philip Cohen’s Family Inequality blog. The abstract of the study reads:

This study combined demographic and insti- tutional explanations of women’s employment, describing and explaining the degree to which mothers in industrialized societies are less likely to be employed than women without children. A large number of cross-sectional surveys were pooled, covering 18 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development countries, 192,484 observations, and 305 country-years between 1975 and 1999. These data were merged with measures of institutional context and analyzed with multilevel logistic regression. The results indicate that, over time, women were increasingly likely to combine motherhood and employment in many, but not all, countries. Both mothers and women with- out children were more likely to be employed in societies with a large service sector and low unemployment. The employment of women without children was generally unaffected by family policies. Mothers were more likely to be employed in societies with extensive reconcilia- tion policies and limited family allowances.