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Trends in educational profiles of male lone parents. Evidence from Belgium (1990-2018)

Luisa Fadel, UCLouvain
Christine Schnor, UCLouvain
Diederik Boertien, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED)

This study investigates changes in the socio-demographic profile of lone fatherhood in Belgium, using register and census data for over 20 years (1992-2012). Nowadays, with the diversification of family forms and the rise in divorce and separation, a growing number of children live in lone parent families. Research has focused mainly on lone mothers because women form the largest share of lone parents and because they are known to be concentrated among the lower social strata facing high risks of poverty. Over the past decades, there has been a substantial increase in lone father families, but their socio-economic position remains insufficiently investigated. Do lone fathers also concentrate within lower social strata? Has their profile changed over the years? In a first step, we provide some descriptive statistics of the changes over time in the socioeconomic profiles (educational level) of lone fathers in Belgium. In a second step, we use logistic regression analysis to investigate the association of educational level with lone fatherhood. Our first results show that, in Belgium, despite the increasing proportion of lone fathers with higher levels of education between 1992 and 2012, low educated fathers are still more likely to be lone parents than the higher educated.

Keywords: Family demography, Inequality, Linked data sets

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P6.