Jornt J Mandemakers

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute

Previous studies have shown that relationship sentiments in families follow a pattern wherein either all maintain positive relationships or there are two antagonistic factions. This result is consistent with the network theory of structural balance that individuals befriend their friends’ friend and become enemies with their friends’ enemies. Fault...

Objective: To study whether being aware of the existence of worksite health promotion (WHP), using it, or both is related to employees' task and contextual performance. Methods: Multilevel cross-sectional data came from the European Sustainable Workforce Survey, with data from over 11,000 employees in 259 organizations. Generalized structural eq...

Partners resemble each other in health behaviors and outcomes such as alcohol use, smoking, physical activity, and obesity. While this is consistent with social contagion theory suggesting partner influence, it is notoriously difficult to establish causality because of assortative mating and contextual confounding. We offer a novel approach to stud...

This study explores which factors affect employees' intention to participate in worksite health promotion (WHP) when they work from home. Employees increasingly work from home, yet existing WHP is mainly tied to the workplace. We lack knowledge on what might stimulate employees to make use of WHP specifically when they work from home. Drawing on th...

In many societies child nutritional status varies between siblings because of parental gender and birth order preferences and differential intra-household resource allocation. While more educated women have been found to improve children's nutrition overall, it is unclear whether they also buffer sibling inequalities in nutritional status. We study...

De Leefbaarometer De Leefbaarometer is een instrument dat tot op laag schaalniveau (rastervierkanten van 100 x 100 meter) een inschatting geeft van de leefbaarheid. Het instrument doet dat op basis van een groot aantal kenmerken van de woonomgeving, variërend van de in een gebied ge-pleegde misdrijven tot de lokale geluidsbelasting. Het instrument...

Objective: To study whether workplace social relations explain use of worksite health promotion (WHP), by examining colleagues' and team managers' WHP encouragement of a healthy lifestyle, and colleague WHP uptake. Methods: Multilevel data came from the second wave of the European Sustainable Workforce Survey (4345 employees of 402 team in 9 cou...

It is well-documented that higher educated employees have better health than the lower educated. The workplace has been put forward as a contributor to this inequality. We extend previous work on workplace characteristics that could influence employee health by asking to what extent workplace health promotion (WHP) can account for the relation betw...

Social contagion research suggests that health behaviors (BMI, smoking, drinking, etc.) spread through social networks, including dyadic ties such as between married/cohabiting partners. However, separating contagion from assortative mating ('like seeks like') and shared environmental factors remains notoriously difficult in observational studies....

A healthy workforce is in the interest of employers and employees alike. We investigate what organizations do in promoting and facilitating employee health by studying the availability of Worksite Health Promotion (WHP) in European organizations. We focus on four types of WHP programs: healthy nutrition, sports participation, ergonomic facilities a...

Many pregnant Muslim women fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. A number of studies have reported negative life outcomes in adulthood for children who were prenatally exposed to Ramadan. However, other studies document minimal to no impact on neonatal indicators. Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey consisting of 45,246 observ...

This paper examines whether the simultaneous occurrence of two or more adverse life course transitions has a stronger effect on mental health compared to the effects of the sum of each. The focus is on four life course transitions (partner loss (divorce/separation or death), death of a parent, unemployment, disability) and the data come from a larg...

Higher educated people tend to be more accepting of homosexuality than lower educated people. This has inspired claims that education leads to a higher acceptance of homosexuality. Alternatively, the association between education and acceptance of homosexuality could be confounded by (un)observed family background and stable individual characterist...

A large body of literature has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and age at first birth. However, this relationship may be partly spurious because of family background factors that cannot be controlled for in most research designs. We investigate the extent to which education is causally related to later age at first birth in a...

A large body of literature has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and age at first birth. However, this relationship may be partly spurious because of family background factors that cannot be controlled for in most research designs. We investigate the extent to which education is causally related to later age at first birth in a...

Rationale: Successful transmission of tuberculosis depends on the interplay of human behavior, host immune responses and Mycobacterium tuberculosis virulence factors. Previous studies have focused on identifying host risk factors associated with increased transmission, while the contribution of specific genetic variations in mycobacterial strains...

The genetic architecture of human reproductive behavior—age at first birth (AFB) and number of children ever born (NEB)—has a strong relationship with fitness, human development, infertility and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, very few genetic loci have been identified, and the underlying mechanisms of AFB and NEB are poorly understood...

This study contributes to our knowledge on the association between parenthood and psychological well-being by examining whether pre-parenthood lifestyles (leisure and paid work) moderate the transition to parenthood. We expected that people with less active lifestyles would find it easier to adapt to the demands of parenthood. Using eleven waves of...

Jonge kinderen vergroten de negatieve gevolgen van scheiding voor het welbevinden van de ex-partners. Onderzoek op basis van de Netherlands Kinship Panel Study wijst dat uit. Vooral het welbevinden van moeders van jonge kinderen gaat er sterk op achteruit. Voor mannen en vrouwen zonder jonge kinderen zijn er geen nadelige effecten te traceren.Jonge...

p>This study contributes to our knowledge on the association between parenthood and psychological well-being by examining whether pre-parenthood lifestyles (leisure and paid work) moderate the transition to parenthood. We expected that people with less active lifestyles would find it easier to adapt to the demands of parenthood. Using eleven waves...

LifeLines is a large prospective population-based three generation cohort study in the north of the Netherlands. Different recruitment strategies were adopted: recruitment of an index population via general practitioners, subsequent inclusion of their family members, and online self-registration. Our aim was to investigate the representativeness of...

Using a sample of monozygotic (945, 42 per cent) and dizygotic (1,329, 58 per cent) twin pairs born 1919-68 in the UK, we applied innovative tobit models to investigate genetic and environmental influences on age at first birth (AFB). We found that a substantial part (40 per cent) of the variation in AFB is caused by latent family characteristics....

The current study analysed trends in the time spent preparing and consuming food and the frequency of outsourcing (going out for dinner and take-out) in the Netherlands from 1975 to 2005. We investigated differences between trends on week and weekend days and for different socio-demographic groups. Analyses using pooled data from the Dutch Time Use...

We use the British Cohort Study to investigate to what extent parental resources moderate the association between parental divorce in childhood and lowered child well-being as indicated by maternal reports of child psychological well-being and by academic test scores (reading and math tests). We argue that children of mothers with more years of edu...

Background One of the most widespread clades of Mycobacterium tuberculosis worldwide, the Beijing genotype family, consists of ancient ('atypical') and modern ('typical') strains. Modern Beijing strains outcompete ancient strains in terms of prevalence, while reserving a higher degree of genetic conservation. We hypothesize that their selective adv...

We examine the impact of involuntary job loss on psychological distress and investigate whether the impact differs by educational level using a sample of men drawn from the British Household Panel Study. We expect higher-educated men to suffer less from job loss because they have more resources and better re-employment chances. Alternatively, it co...

This paper investigates whether education buffers the impact of physical disability on psychological distress. It further investigates what makes education helpful, by examining whether cognitive ability and occupational class can explain the buffering effect of education. Two waves of the 1958 British National Child Development Study are used to t...

This paper investigates whether an adverse family background amplifies the distressing effects of divorce. We use several waves (at age 0, 7, 11, 16, 33, and 42) of the British National Child Development Study to study the effect of divorce on psychological distress in middle adulthood (between ages 33 and 42). We measure family background with ind...

This study uses data on support and contact in 4,055 parent-child dyads drawn from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study to test explanations of reporting discrepancies, which focus on sources of bias and inaccurate reporting. Contrary to the generational stake hypothesis, parents’ reports are not characterized by a general positive bias. Consistent...

Gegevens over intergenerationele steun en contact in 4.055 ouder-kind dyades afkomstig van de Netherlands Kinship Panel Study zijn gebruikt om verklaringen te toetsen voor rapportageverschillen. De verklaringen richten zich op bronnen van vertekening en van onnauwkeurigheid. De resultaten laten geen systematische overschatting zien van steun en con...

Summary Bias and inaccuracy of parent’s and child’s reports of intergenerational support and contact This paper uses data on intergenerational support and contact in 4,055 parent-child dyads drawn from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study to test explanations of response discrepancies in paired parent and child reports of intergenerational support a...

Previous research using paired parent-child data has established discrepancies in the reporting of obligations, support, and contact. Little is known, however about the effects of report discrepancies on parental well-being. Our study has two working hypotheses. The first is that social reality matters, implying that accuracy of reporting is the be...