Maria Stanfors
Biographic Data
| ID | 126344 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Stanfors |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Stanfors |
| SIGNATURE | STANFORS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5007-4257 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 256 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 36 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
A century of divorce
Divorce increased throughout the twentieth century across Western nations. Procyclical divorce, i.e. following macroeconomic cycles, is often suggested and women’s increased economic independence is considered a contributor to increasing divorce rates. Research has, however, overlooked that different factors may drive divorce rates across time horizons. Macroeconomic conditions, like unemployment, covary with divorce in the short term, while proc…
The changing demography of single motherhood
Single motherhood has long been a feature of European family systems, but its meaning and determinants have changed substantially over time. Using longitudinal individual-level data from the Scanian Economic and Demographic Database (SEDD), covering southern Sweden between 1905 and 2015, we examine the changing demography of single motherhood from a long-term life course perspective. We analyze how the relative importance of different routes into…
Unpaid Care for Elderly Parents and Labor Supply Among Older Working-Age Men and Women Across Europe
With population aging, more adults across Europe face competing demands of working for pay and caring for elderly family members. Associated tradeoffs are expected to be negative, gendered, and vary across contexts with different levels of gender equality, public support for eldercare, and work-family balance. Using SHARE data from 2004–20, this study investigates how unpaid caregiving to independently living parents relates to labor supply among…
Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce in Sweden, 1920–2015
Many studies demonstrate an intergenerational transmission of divorce with a focus primarily on more recent decades; however, the extent to which this relationship is deeply rooted or has changed over time remains unclear. Explanations, including sociodemographic and interpersonal factors, have been offered as links between parental divorce and the stability of offspring's marriage. We use individual-level longitudinal data from the Scanian Econo…
Between voluntarism and compulsion
Membership in mutual health insurance societies spread among industrial workers in the late nineteenth century. We study determinants of such membership among male workers in Swedish manufacturing by using matched employer-employee data from three industries covering all workers (i.e. members and non-members, N > 12 000) and firms around 1900. We find remarkably high rates of membership overall, and especially among married workers. The associati…
Unpaid caregiving and stress among older working-age men and women in Sweden
Many individuals are experiencing the potentially stressful combination of providing care while still employed. In this study, the association between unpaid caregiving to another adult and self-reported stress among men and women aged 45-74 is investigated, using nationally representative time use diary data for Sweden (2000-01 and 2010-11, N = 6689). Multivariate regression analyses established that women were overall more stressed than men wit…
Does Caring for Parents Take Its Toll? Gender Differences in Caregiving Intensity, Coresidence, and Psychological Well-Being Across Europe
Given population ageing and the emphasis on in-home care, more working-age adults are facing the demands of providing unpaid care to the elderly with potential implications for their own well-being. Such effects likely vary across Europe because care is differently organized with a differing emphasis on public support, dependence on family, and orientation toward gender equality. We studied the relationship between unpaid caregiving for elderly p…
Socio-economic status and the rise of divorce in Sweden
An established negative association between socio-economic status (SES) and divorce has applied to most Western nations since 1960. We expected a positive association between SES and divorce for low-divorce contexts historically because only individuals in higher social strata had the resources to overcome barriers to divorce. According to Goode's socio-economic growth theory, this relationship was reversed as industrialization and modernization …
The price of poverty
Childhood poverty increases the likelihood of being poor as an adult. We know relatively little about this persistence of poverty in the past and whether it changed as modern welfare societies developed. This study both analyses determinants of childhood poverty and assesses the association between childhood poverty and economic outcomes in adulthood for men and women who grew up in southern Sweden, and who were followed to adulthood regardless o…
Industrious migrants
Migration played a central role in industrialisation by reallocating labour from the countryside to urban areas and centres of manufacturing where it was in high demand, and better remunerated, with implications for economic growth and individual well-being. We investigate the labour market performance of internal migrants in Sweden around the turn of the last century; a period of industrialisation and increasing migration. We add to the literatu…
Ethnic Composition of Couples and Mutual Health Benefit Receipt
The literature on health dependencies among partners typically ignores diversity of partnership characteristics. One salient example is the ethnic composition. We extend prior work on partnerships and health by investigating how married and cohabiting partners mutually influence each other's receipt of health-related benefits, focusing on how such correlations vary with the couple's ethnic composition. We study partners' mutual receipt of sicknes…
The Great Convergence
Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐…
Educational assortative mating, gender equality, and income differentiation across Europe
Demographic explanations for the rise in household income inequality include increased educational assortative mating and changes in the division of paid labour within families. Building on this research, the current study focuses on the connected nature of these two inequality-producing mechanisms, while at the same time bridging the divide with the economic literature on the role of income differentiation. Drawing on the 2004–2008 European Unio…
Understanding the Gender Gap Further
To better understand the historical gender wage gap, we investigate the wages of Swedish compositors circa 1900 using a rich data set of matched employer-employee information with national coverage. In line with previous findings, women earned about 70 percent of men's wages on average. Individual and job characteristics explain much of this shortfall. Firm characteristics or firm fixed effects, on average, explain 17 percent of the gap, though t…
Caregiving time costs and trade-offs
Population ageing is putting pressure on pension systems and health care services, creating an imperative to extend working lives. At the same time, policy makers throughout Europe and North America are trying to expand the use of home care over institutional services. Thus, the number of people combining caregiving responsibilities with paid work is growing. We investigate the conflicts that arise from this by exploring the time costs of unpaid …
In sickness or in health? Register-based evidence on partners' mutual receipt of sickness allowance and disability pension
Time Alone or Together? Trends and Trade-offs Among Dual-Earner Couples, Sweden 1990-2010
In recent decades, the dual-earner couple has become increasingly normative, potentially reducing the time couples and families spend together. The authors investigated how coupled individuals allocated time together, alone, with children, and as a family, exploring changes between 1990 and 2010 in Sweden using three waves of the Swedish Time Use Survey (N = 9,544). Ordinary least squares and decomposition analyses find a trend toward time togeth…
Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing
Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across …
The forest and the trees
The separate spheres, in which men dominate the public sphere of politics, arts, media, and wage work and women dominate the private sphere of unpaid production and caring, is a powerful configuration in much social theory (including Parsons, Becker, and G
State Abortion Context and U.S. Women's Contraceptive Choices, 1995–2010
To prevent unwanted pregnancies, it is important to ensure access to highly effective contraceptive methods when access to abortions is limited
State Abortion Context and U.S. Women's Contraceptive Choices, 1995-2010
Estimating Historical Wage Profiles
In this article, researchers evaluate the empirical performance of the Mincer earnings equation, which has been the benchmark model for assessment of wage profiles since 1974. The analysis concerns workers in the manufacturing industry in three countries before 1900. The Mincer equation must be adjusted with respect to functional form in order to capture the wage profiles of past industrial workers. The quadratic spline consistently provides the …
A winning strategy? The employment of women and firm longevity during industrialisation
Why do certain firms prosper and grow old while other firms fail? Established knowledge tells us that longevity is related to the firm's ability to adapt to market conditions, through product diversification, learning-by-doing and adopting new strategies regarding technology, human resources and management. By estimating duration models using new data covering the entire Swedish tobacco industry, we find that firms employing more women were consi…
Women in a changing economy
In this article I focus on women's advancement in the Swedish labour market during more than a century. By applying a long-term perspective I give the historical background to what is commonly seen as a success story. By reassessing census and labour force survey data I show that participation rates may tell a misleading tale not only for the past but also for the present. In a long-term perspective, Sweden does not stand out as a country with hi…
Gender, productivity, and the nature of work and pay
Women have typically been paid less than men throughout history. We investigate earnings in Swedish cigar making around 1900. Strength was unimportant, yet the gender wage gap was large. Differences in characteristics, such as age and experience, and different jobs within firms, account for two-thirds of the gap overall, and the entire gap for piece-rate workers. Firms were as willing to employ women as men in the better-paying piece-rate section…
Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence From Sweden
Parenthood is often considered a major factor behind gender differences in time allocation, especially between paid work and housework. This article investigates the impact of parenthood on men's and women's daily time use in Sweden and how it changed over the 1990s. The analysis is made using time diary data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS;N= 13,729) and multivariate Tobit regressions. The results indicate that while parenthood in 1…
The Great Convergence
Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐…
It's About Time! Gender, Parenthood, and Household Divisions of Labor Under Different Welfare Regimes
Having young children generally intensifies gendered patterns of time use. During the 1990s, this pattern changed in several Nordic countries, where welfare state arrangements support gender equality and work-family balance more comprehensively than elsewhere. We investigate the impact of parenthood on men's and women's time use across welfare state regimes, performing ordinary least squares regressions using data from the Multinational Time Use …
The forest and the trees
The separate spheres, in which men dominate the public sphere of politics, arts, media, and wage work and women dominate the private sphere of unpaid production and caring, is a powerful configuration in much social theory (including Parsons, Becker, and G
Family life in power couples
This article studies continued childbearing and union stability among "power couples," or dual-career couples. The determinants of these events are analysed multivariately using longitudinal data on couples from population registers in Sweden, 1991â 200
Women in a changing economy
In this article I focus on women's advancement in the Swedish labour market during more than a century. By applying a long-term perspective I give the historical background to what is commonly seen as a success story. By reassessing census and labour force survey data I show that participation rates may tell a misleading tale not only for the past but also for the present. In a long-term perspective, Sweden does not stand out as a country with hi…
Intergenerational transmission of young motherhood. Evidence from Sweden, 1986–2009
This study examines the intergenerational transmission of fertility patterns from mothers who had their first birth at young ages to their daughters using nationally representative longitudinal data from from population registers in Sweden, 1986–2009. It tests several mechanisms, including education, labor market attachment, socio-economic background, and family characteristics, that may intervene with the intergenerational transmission of reprod…
Racial and Ethnic Differences in U.S. Women's Choice Of Reversible Contraceptives, 1995–2010
Further research is needed to identify factors that may be causing racial and ethnic disparities in contraceptive decisions to widen
Time Alone or Together? Trends and Trade-offs Among Dual-Earner Couples, Sweden 1990-2010
In recent decades, the dual-earner couple has become increasingly normative, potentially reducing the time couples and families spend together. The authors investigated how coupled individuals allocated time together, alone, with children, and as a family, exploring changes between 1990 and 2010 in Sweden using three waves of the Swedish Time Use Survey (N = 9,544). Ordinary least squares and decomposition analyses find a trend toward time togeth…
Re-Traditionalisation of Gender Relations in the 1990s? The Impact of Parenthood on Gendered Time Use in Three Scandinavian Countries
This study investigates the impact of parenthood on gendered time use in Scandinavia. Having (young) children at home generally intensifies gendered patterns in time use, and strengthens the traditional household division of labour, whereby women perform more child care and housework than men. In Sweden during the 1990s, this pattern changed and parenthood affected men's and women's time use in a more similar way by the end of that decade. The ar…
A winning strategy? The employment of women and firm longevity during industrialisation
Why do certain firms prosper and grow old while other firms fail? Established knowledge tells us that longevity is related to the firm's ability to adapt to market conditions, through product diversification, learning-by-doing and adopting new strategies regarding technology, human resources and management. By estimating duration models using new data covering the entire Swedish tobacco industry, we find that firms employing more women were consi…
Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing
Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across …
Gender, productivity, and the nature of work and pay
Women have typically been paid less than men throughout history. We investigate earnings in Swedish cigar making around 1900. Strength was unimportant, yet the gender wage gap was large. Differences in characteristics, such as age and experience, and different jobs within firms, account for two-thirds of the gap overall, and the entire gap for piece-rate workers. Firms were as willing to employ women as men in the better-paying piece-rate section…
Does Caring for Parents Take Its Toll? Gender Differences in Caregiving Intensity, Coresidence, and Psychological Well-Being Across Europe
Given population ageing and the emphasis on in-home care, more working-age adults are facing the demands of providing unpaid care to the elderly with potential implications for their own well-being. Such effects likely vary across Europe because care is differently organized with a differing emphasis on public support, dependence on family, and orientation toward gender equality. We studied the relationship between unpaid caregiving for elderly p…
Socio-economic status and the rise of divorce in Sweden
An established negative association between socio-economic status (SES) and divorce has applied to most Western nations since 1960. We expected a positive association between SES and divorce for low-divorce contexts historically because only individuals in higher social strata had the resources to overcome barriers to divorce. According to Goode's socio-economic growth theory, this relationship was reversed as industrialization and modernization …
Educational assortative mating, gender equality, and income differentiation across Europe
Demographic explanations for the rise in household income inequality include increased educational assortative mating and changes in the division of paid labour within families. Building on this research, the current study focuses on the connected nature of these two inequality-producing mechanisms, while at the same time bridging the divide with the economic literature on the role of income differentiation. Drawing on the 2004–2008 European Unio…
Was there a family gap in late nineteenth century manufacturing? Evidence from Sweden
While women today often face a substantial wage penalty for childbearing, we show that this was not always the case, making use of a rich material of matched employer-employee data covering the Swedish tobacco industry in 1898 in its entirety. Although working conditions were dire, and hours long, women working in the late nineteenth-century manufacturing industry faced no motherhood penalty. Compared to other women, mothers worked slightly less …
In the footsteps of their fathers? Occupational following among Swedish tobacco workers
This article explores the role of kinship in the Swedish tobacco industry of 1898, making use of rich data that cover the entire industry and include both men and women. The focus is on the role of families in labour recruitment, which is often claimed to have been important. In this case, however, it was not the norm to have a father in the same industry. Occupational following was clearly a gendered phenomenon. To follow in the footsteps of fat…
Between voluntarism and compulsion
Membership in mutual health insurance societies spread among industrial workers in the late nineteenth century. We study determinants of such membership among male workers in Swedish manufacturing by using matched employer-employee data from three industries covering all workers (i.e. members and non-members, N > 12 000) and firms around 1900. We find remarkably high rates of membership overall, and especially among married workers. The associati…
State Abortion Context and U.S. Women's Contraceptive Choices, 1995–2010
To prevent unwanted pregnancies, it is important to ensure access to highly effective contraceptive methods when access to abortions is limited
Estimating Historical Wage Profiles
In this article, researchers evaluate the empirical performance of the Mincer earnings equation, which has been the benchmark model for assessment of wage profiles since 1974. The analysis concerns workers in the manufacturing industry in three countries before 1900. The Mincer equation must be adjusted with respect to functional form in order to capture the wage profiles of past industrial workers. The quadratic spline consistently provides the …
Fertility and the fast-track
During recent decades women have made considerable advances in education and the labor market, even in fast-track professions such as law, medicine, and academia. While women have entered high-status professions, the career paths of some jobs have changed
Leaving home in post-war Sweden
Leaving the parental home is an important transition in life since it is often connected to independence through education, labour market participation, marriage, etc. In this paper we analyse the decision to leave home among a sample of 3582 males and females in three birth cohorts (1949, 1959 and 1964), using survival analysis. The dataset is derived from the Swedish Family Survey, conducted in 1992/93. We find little change over time, i. e. fr…
Does Parenthood Strengthen a Traditional Household Division of Labor? Evidence From Sweden
Parenthood is often considered a major factor behind gender differences in time allocation, especially between paid work and housework. This article investigates the impact of parenthood on men's and women's daily time use in Sweden and how it changed over the 1990s. The analysis is made using time diary data from the Multinational Time Use Survey (MTUS;N= 13,729) and multivariate Tobit regressions. The results indicate that while parenthood in 1…
Family life in power couples
This article studies continued childbearing and union stability among "power couples," or dual-career couples. The determinants of these events are analysed multivariately using longitudinal data on couples from population registers in Sweden, 1991â 200
Gender, occupation, or workplace
Historical studies on earnings differentials are largely based on group data and much less so on micro-level data. We use detailed information from a nationwide survey that matches employers and employees and covers the entire tobacco industry in Sweden in 1898. When comparing the labour market outcomes of women to those of men, we find that the cost of being female varied across branches, which contributed to the overall earnings gap in the indu…
In the footsteps of their fathers? Occupational following among Swedish tobacco workers
This article explores the role of kinship in the Swedish tobacco industry of 1898, making use of rich data that cover the entire industry and include both men and women. The focus is on the role of families in labour recruitment, which is often claimed to have been important. In this case, however, it was not the norm to have a father in the same industry. Occupational following was clearly a gendered phenomenon. To follow in the footsteps of fat…
Was there a family gap in late nineteenth century manufacturing? Evidence from Sweden
While women today often face a substantial wage penalty for childbearing, we show that this was not always the case, making use of a rich material of matched employer-employee data covering the Swedish tobacco industry in 1898 in its entirety. Although working conditions were dire, and hours long, women working in the late nineteenth-century manufacturing industry faced no motherhood penalty. Compared to other women, mothers worked slightly less …
Racial and Ethnic Differences in U.S. Women's Choice Of Reversible Contraceptives, 1995–2010
Further research is needed to identify factors that may be causing racial and ethnic disparities in contraceptive decisions to widen
Re-Traditionalisation of Gender Relations in the 1990s? The Impact of Parenthood on Gendered Time Use in Three Scandinavian Countries
This study investigates the impact of parenthood on gendered time use in Scandinavia. Having (young) children at home generally intensifies gendered patterns in time use, and strengthens the traditional household division of labour, whereby women perform more child care and housework than men. In Sweden during the 1990s, this pattern changed and parenthood affected men's and women's time use in a more similar way by the end of that decade. The ar…
Intergenerational transmission of young motherhood. Evidence from Sweden, 1986–2009
This study examines the intergenerational transmission of fertility patterns from mothers who had their first birth at young ages to their daughters using nationally representative longitudinal data from from population registers in Sweden, 1986–2009. It tests several mechanisms, including education, labor market attachment, socio-economic background, and family characteristics, that may intervene with the intergenerational transmission of reprod…
Women in a changing economy
In this article I focus on women's advancement in the Swedish labour market during more than a century. By applying a long-term perspective I give the historical background to what is commonly seen as a success story. By reassessing census and labour force survey data I show that participation rates may tell a misleading tale not only for the past but also for the present. In a long-term perspective, Sweden does not stand out as a country with hi…
Gender, productivity, and the nature of work and pay
Women have typically been paid less than men throughout history. We investigate earnings in Swedish cigar making around 1900. Strength was unimportant, yet the gender wage gap was large. Differences in characteristics, such as age and experience, and different jobs within firms, account for two-thirds of the gap overall, and the entire gap for piece-rate workers. Firms were as willing to employ women as men in the better-paying piece-rate section…
Fertility and the fast-track
During recent decades women have made considerable advances in education and the labor market, even in fast-track professions such as law, medicine, and academia. While women have entered high-status professions, the career paths of some jobs have changed
It's About Time! Gender, Parenthood, and Household Divisions of Labor Under Different Welfare Regimes
Having young children generally intensifies gendered patterns of time use. During the 1990s, this pattern changed in several Nordic countries, where welfare state arrangements support gender equality and work-family balance more comprehensively than elsewhere. We investigate the impact of parenthood on men's and women's time use across welfare state regimes, performing ordinary least squares regressions using data from the Multinational Time Use …
State Abortion Context and U.S. Women's Contraceptive Choices, 1995–2010
To prevent unwanted pregnancies, it is important to ensure access to highly effective contraceptive methods when access to abortions is limited
State Abortion Context and U.S. Women's Contraceptive Choices, 1995-2010
Estimating Historical Wage Profiles
In this article, researchers evaluate the empirical performance of the Mincer earnings equation, which has been the benchmark model for assessment of wage profiles since 1974. The analysis concerns workers in the manufacturing industry in three countries before 1900. The Mincer equation must be adjusted with respect to functional form in order to capture the wage profiles of past industrial workers. The quadratic spline consistently provides the …
A winning strategy? The employment of women and firm longevity during industrialisation
Why do certain firms prosper and grow old while other firms fail? Established knowledge tells us that longevity is related to the firm's ability to adapt to market conditions, through product diversification, learning-by-doing and adopting new strategies regarding technology, human resources and management. By estimating duration models using new data covering the entire Swedish tobacco industry, we find that firms employing more women were consi…
Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing
Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across …
The forest and the trees
The separate spheres, in which men dominate the public sphere of politics, arts, media, and wage work and women dominate the private sphere of unpaid production and caring, is a powerful configuration in much social theory (including Parsons, Becker, and G
Time Alone or Together? Trends and Trade-offs Among Dual-Earner Couples, Sweden 1990-2010
In recent decades, the dual-earner couple has become increasingly normative, potentially reducing the time couples and families spend together. The authors investigated how coupled individuals allocated time together, alone, with children, and as a family, exploring changes between 1990 and 2010 in Sweden using three waves of the Swedish Time Use Survey (N = 9,544). Ordinary least squares and decomposition analyses find a trend toward time togeth…
Caregiving time costs and trade-offs
Population ageing is putting pressure on pension systems and health care services, creating an imperative to extend working lives. At the same time, policy makers throughout Europe and North America are trying to expand the use of home care over institutional services. Thus, the number of people combining caregiving responsibilities with paid work is growing. We investigate the conflicts that arise from this by exploring the time costs of unpaid …
In sickness or in health? Register-based evidence on partners' mutual receipt of sickness allowance and disability pension
Understanding the Gender Gap Further
To better understand the historical gender wage gap, we investigate the wages of Swedish compositors circa 1900 using a rich data set of matched employer-employee information with national coverage. In line with previous findings, women earned about 70 percent of men's wages on average. Individual and job characteristics explain much of this shortfall. Firm characteristics or firm fixed effects, on average, explain 17 percent of the gap, though t…
Ethnic Composition of Couples and Mutual Health Benefit Receipt
The literature on health dependencies among partners typically ignores diversity of partnership characteristics. One salient example is the ethnic composition. We extend prior work on partnerships and health by investigating how married and cohabiting partners mutually influence each other's receipt of health-related benefits, focusing on how such correlations vary with the couple's ethnic composition. We study partners' mutual receipt of sicknes…
The Great Convergence
Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐…
Economics (28 works) · Demographic economics (27 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Population (17 works) · Labour economics (16 works) · Demography (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Work-Family Balance Challenges (13 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (12 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (12 works)