Karsten Hank

Karsten Hank
University of Cologne | UOC · Institute of Sociology & Social Psychology

PhD

About

184
Publications
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6,421
Citations

Publications

Publications (184)
Preprint
Objective: To develop a typology of relationship quality for nuclear and extended familyrelations in the United States, accounting for variation across kinship types and racial/ethnicgroups.Background: Existing typologies of family relationships primarily focus on nuclear ties,often neglecting relations with extended kin. Ties to extended kin are,...
Article
To date, only a few studies have investigated the bidirectional relationship in the intergenerational proximity-health nexus, specifically how geographic proximity affects older parents' depressive symptoms and vice versa. Drawing on eight waves (2004–2018) of the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (n = 17,671), we examine several mechanisms (‘mobili...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Mental health problems among adolescents have become more prevalent in recent years. Parents’ and siblings’ mental health might be affected by living with a depressed adolescent. This study examines how the mental health of family members develops in the years before and after an adolescent seeks help for depression. Methods Unique Norwegi...
Article
Objective The aim was (a) to assess the association between family estrangement and psychological well‐being in adulthood, (b) to investigate potential differences in this association by type of relationship (intergenerational vs. siblings), and (c) to assess whether estrangement from multiple family relations (parents and siblings) is associated w...
Preprint
This commentary on “The Swedish Kinship Universe” by Kolk, Andersson, Pettersson, & Drefahl (2023) examines whether the Swedish findings are generalizable to another demographically advanced population, the Netherlands, and whether differences in cohort fertility patterns and divorce rates affect the frequencies of different kin types. Our commenta...
Chapter
This introductory chapter begins with a brief outline of key aspects of the current state of research on the family-migration-nexus, subsequently identifying key knowledge gaps. From this, we develop some more general thoughts about the kind of data are needed to fill existing research gaps, and then use the German Emigration and Remigration Panel...
Chapter
This study explores migration-specific heterogeneities and dynamics in the relationship satisfaction of couples with at least one internationally mobile partner. We are specifically interested in the association of post-migration relationship satisfaction with migration-related characteristics, such as the direction of migration (emigration vs. rem...
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Maintaining social ties across borders is challenging and migration may affect family members’ capacity to intergenerational support. However, transnational intergenerational family relations of emigrants from the Global North have rarely been investigated yet. Our study assesses two core dimensions of intergenerational relationships—associational...
Chapter
Article
This data brief introduces the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA; https://www.freda-panel.de/), a longitudinal, multi-actor database for family research. Major substantive fields addressed in the questionnaire include fertility-related attitudes and behaviours, reproductive health, work-family conflict, couples’ division of labour, gender...
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This is the Editorial on the Special Issue "Family Research and Demographic Analysis – New Insights from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA)".
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We investigate (a) how the proportion of European grandparents providing childcare changed over a period of 15 years, (b) how these proportions differ by gender and education, and (c) how countries not covered in earlier analyses fit into previously identified regional patterns of grandparental childcare in Europe. Using data from Waves 1, 2, and 8...
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Previous research has demonstrated that family transitions, specifically births and deaths of preceding and following generations within families, are associated with individuals' later-life wellbeing and health. However, lifecourse, family systems and role theories suggest that this relationship might be complex because, as individuals age, they c...
Article
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Significant expansion of legal rights and recognition of sexual minority populations triggered expectations that structural stigma, sexual minority stress and, consequently, previously well-documented disadvantages in health and well-being may decline over time. The empirical evidence on this issue is, however, still sparse and inconclusive. We con...
Data
FReDA - The German Family Demography Panel Study is a representative panel for 18-49 year old population with about 32,000 respondents. FReDA is rooted in the international Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) and the German Family Panel (pairfam) and covers further innovative items developed by the FReDA-team and the scientific community via a call...
Article
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Whereas interest in adult sibling relationships has been growing, we are not aware of any quantitative studies focusing on sibling estrangement (that is, lack of contact or emotional closeness). This gap in the literature seems unfortunate, because estrangement in close family relationships has been suggested to be momentous for family functioning...
Chapter
A plethora of studies provide evidence of family relationships’ key role in individuals’ well-being across the entire life course and particularly at older ages. When discussing the relationship between health inequalities and family relations, the present chapter thus places a particular emphasis on grandparents and grandchildren. After briefly re...
Article
We analyze data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, including a pre-pandemic baseline and seven survey waves between May 2020 and September 2021. Fixed effects panel regression models are run over more than 11,000 individuals, distinguishing among women and men with young children (<5 years), older children (5-15 years), or no children in the...
Chapter
The Oxford International Handbook of Family Policy has two main aims: to identify key developments globally in regard to the forms and modalities of relevant policies, and to take a critical look at the developments regarding those policies. The overall goal is to uncover the extent to which concerns about the family and the role and practices of p...
Chapter
The second, updated and expanded edition of the handbook provides an overview of knowledge about age and aging in "Western" societies at the beginning of the 21st century that is equally suitable for research and study. The focus is on relevant contributions from the social and behavioral sciences and their approach to selected aspects of age(ing)....
Chapter
The second, updated and expanded edition of the handbook provides an overview of knowledge about age and aging in "Western" societies at the beginning of the 21st century that is equally suitable for research and study. The focus is on relevant contributions from the social and behavioral sciences and their approach to selected aspects of age(ing)....
Chapter
The second, updated and expanded edition of the handbook provides an overview of knowledge about age and aging in "Western" societies at the beginning of the 21st century that is equally suitable for research and study. The focus is on relevant contributions from the social and behavioral sciences and their approach to selected aspects of age(ing)....
Chapter
Die Neuauflage des Handbuchs folgt im Wesentlichen, abgesehen von Überarbeitungen und Aktualisierungen aller Kapitel, der bewährten Struktur der ersten Auflage von 2015. Bis auf sehr wenige Ausnahmen finden sich alle Kapitel der 1. Auflage – in überarbeiteter Fassung und zum Teil mit neuen (Ko-)Autor:innen – auch in der 2. Auflage wieder. Allerding...
Data
Cite as: Bujard, M.; Gummer, T.; Hank, K.; Neyer, F. J.; Pollak, R.; Schneider, N. F.; Spieß, C. K.; Wolf, C.; …; Weih, U. (2022). FReDA-The German Family Demography Panel Study. GESIS, Cologne. ZA7777 Data File Version 1.0.0. http://dx.
Article
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For people living in the former East Germany, reunification with the former West Germany fundamentally transformed the sociopolitical system and most domains of everyday life. Previous research has revealed temporal shifts in average life satisfaction after reunification in the former East German population as a whole, but so far little is known ab...
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Previous research has shown that gender role attitudes can predict changes in couples’ housework division over critical life events, but these studies might have suffered from endogeneity because such life events are anticipated and may be affected by gender role attitudes. In contrast, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was a truly e...
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Objective To analyze the prevalence and predictors of children's estrangement from noncoresident biological mothers and fathers during young and middle adulthood. Background Intergenerational relationships exhibit considerable heterogeneity and need not always be close or intact. However, despite its potentially far-reaching impact on the entire f...
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This article introduces the evolution, framework, objectives, and design of the new data infrastructure “FReDA – The German Family Demography Panel Study”, which has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2020. FReDA is rooted in the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS) and the German Family Panel (pairfam)....
Preprint
Full-text available
Previous research has shown that gender role attitudes can predict changes in couples’ housework division over critical life events, but these studies might have suffered from endogeneity because the occurrence of such life events is anticipated and may be affected by gender role attitudes. In contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic was a truly exogenous s...
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Objective: To contribute to the discussion about the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender (in)equality. Background: We focus on a core aspect of gender (in)equality in intimate relationships, namely couples’ division of housework and childcare, and whether this has changed during the Corona crisis. Method: Our descriptive analysis...
Article
Despite the important role of adult parent–child and sibling relations in the family system, only few studies have investigated yet, how the common adult experience of parental death impacts sibling relations. Estimating fixed-effects regression models using four waves of data from the German Family Panel (pairfam; n = 4,123 respondents), the prese...
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Full-text available
Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über zentrale Befunde zu intergenerationalen Beziehungen in Deutschland und Europa, wobei auch familiale Generationenbeziehungen jenseits der "Kernfamilie" und die Bedeutung wohlfahrtsstaatlicher Kontexte berücksichtigt werden.
Article
Families have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown, but barely any research has been conducted yet, investigating how COVID-19-related stressors – and, specifically, disruptions in established employment arrangements – affected couples’ relationship quality. To account more comprehensively for such non-monetary costs o...
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Full-text available
Grandparenthood constitutes a significant role for older adults and may have important health implications. Our study examines the grandparenthood-mortality nexus, controlling for an array of potentially confounding variables. Longitudinal survey data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) were used, comprising twelve biennial waves from 1992 t...
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Women’s life courses underwent substantial changes in the family and work domains in the second half of the twentieth century. The associated fundamental changes in opportunity structures and values challenged the importance of families of origin for individual life courses, but two research strands suggest enduring within-family reproduction of wo...
Article
Objective Drawing on a relational developmental systems approach, this brief report examines spillover and compensation processes in self‐disclosure and conflict in adult relations with intimate partners and siblings. Background Although some studies have examined links between sibling and partner relationships during adolescence, no research has...
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Full-text available
The worldwide spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the fieldwork of surveys. The data collection efforts via the face-to-face mode have been affected especially, including the ongoing surveys that were in the field during the COVID-19 outbreak and the planned surveys scheduled for fieldwork later in 2020. We provide an account of how COVID...
Article
Objectives: Using high-quality data from Germany, this study aims to contribute to the yet little knowledge about possible changes in adult parent-child relationships within countries over time. Method: Analyzing 13,106 interviews from four rounds of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS), covering the period 1996-2014, we monitor stability and change...
Article
This study investigates grandparent–grandchild relations in emerging adulthood, focusing on grandchildren’s transition to residential independence and the role of parents as mediators. Using three waves of the German Ageing Survey (DEAS), we estimate fixed effects models to assess changes in the frequency of contact and emotional closeness of 349 g...
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Full-text available
Grandparenthood is a significant social role for older adults and may have important health implications. Parenthood itself has been associated with some protective health effects, although findings have been mixed. Whether grandparenthood is associated with important long-term health effects such as mortality is largely unknown. This study examine...
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This article provides an overview of families and their institutional contexts in Western societies, focusing on the role of family policies and legal regulations in union dynamics, fertility, children’s wellbeing, and intergenerational relations. We argue that family dynamics are driven by changing institutional opportunities and constraints, wher...
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Little research has been conducted yet investigating gender preferences among immigrant parents in Western host countries. We add further empirical evidence to this sparse literature by analyzing pooled micro-census data for the years 2005–2013 from Germany. Next to updating earlier findings on the native population, we assess parental gender prefe...
Book
This handbook aims to provide an overview of knowledge about age and ageing in ‘Western’ societies at the beginning of the 21st century, which is intended to be equally suitable for research and practice. It focuses on relevant contributions from the social and behavioural sciences and their access to selected aspects of age and ageing. Its main to...
Chapter
This handbook aims to provide an overview of knowledge about age and ageing in ‘Western’ societies at the beginning of the 21st century, which is intended to be equally suitable for research and practice. It focuses on relevant contributions from the social and behavioural sciences and their access to selected aspects of age and ageing. Its main to...
Chapter
This handbook aims to provide an overview of knowledge about age and ageing in ‘Western’ societies at the beginning of the 21st century, which is intended to be equally suitable for research and practice. It focuses on relevant contributions from the social and behavioural sciences and their access to selected aspects of age and ageing. Its main to...
Article
Ehemalige politische Häftlinge der DDR, die mit ca. 200.000 Personen eine quantitativ bedeutsame Gruppe darstellen, konnten bislang in Untersuchungen der Ost-West-Binnenmigration in Deutschland nicht explizit berücksichtigt werden. Mit unserer deskriptiven Auswertung miteinander verknüpfter administrativer Daten der Deutschen Rentenversicherung Bun...
Article
BACKGROUND Whereas recent years have brought comprehensive demographic accounts of the gay and lesbian population in the United States and several European countries, relatively little is yet known about gays' and lesbians' family-related attitudes and expectations. OBJECTIVE The present study contributes to closing this research gap, comparing ind...
Chapter
Aus Basis von retrospektiv erhobenen Daten des SHARELIFE-Projektes wird im vorliegenden Beitrag der Zusammenhang von Elternschaft und Renteneintritt in 13 kontinentaleuropäischen Ländern untersucht. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse zeigen, dass (mehr) Kinder tendenziell zu einem späteren Renteneintritt bei Männern führen, die bis in späte Erwerbsphasen e...
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Against the background of a ‘new wave’ of empirical studies investigating various aspects of grandparenthood across a broad range of regional contexts, this article aims to take stock of what has been achieved so far and which lessons we can learn from this for the future. Our focus is on the measurement of grandparenthood and grandparenting in qua...
Article
Few studies have yet investigated how intergenerational solidarity between parents and adult children is associated with intragenerational relations between siblings. Theoretically, one might expect compensation between inter- and intragenerational relationship solidarity as well as spillover effects from parent-child solidarity to sibling solidari...
Article
This study investigated relationships of full-, half-, and step-siblings in young and middle adulthood with a focus on frequency of contact, emotional closeness, and conflict. We distinguish full-siblings whose parents still live together as a couple (Type 1) from those whose parents separated or died (Type 2). Based on data from Wave 5 of the Germ...
Chapter
Alter ist insofern ein für die Soziologie grundlegender Begriff, als das kalendarische Alter eines Individuums ein wichtiges zugeschriebenes, sich veränderndes Merkmal darstellt (Altern als Prozess), anhand dessen der Zugang zu einer Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Handlungsoptionen und Rollen institutionell geregelt wird (z. B. Schulbesuch, Eheschließu...
Article
Exploiting unique German administrative data, we estimate the association between an expansion in maternity leave duration from two to six months in 1979 and mothers’ postbirth long-term sickness absence over a period of three decades after childbirth. Adopting a difference-in-difference approach, we first assess the reform’s labor market effects a...
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Full-text available
This review of research on the role of family relations in shaping individuals’ health (and vice versa) conceptualizes health as a multidimensional outcome with objective and subjective components. The family-health nexus is considered from the adult’s perspective (focusing on partnership and parenthood) as well as from the child’s perspective (foc...
Book
Der in dieser Festschrift anlässlich seines 65. Geburtstages gewürdigte Gert G. Wagner ist als Sozial- und Wirtschaftsforscher über disziplinäre Grenzen gegangen. Als engagierter Politikberater und innovativer Wissenschaftsmanager hat er immer wieder sozial- und wissenschaftspolitische Debatten angestoßen und begleitet. Kollegen und Weggefährten li...
Article
Using longitudinal survey data from the Socio-Economic Panel Study (N = 3,003 respondents with 22,165 individual-year observations) and exploiting temporal and regional variation in state-level unemployment rates in West Germany, we explore differences in trajectories of individuals’ self-rated health over a period of up to 23 years after leaving e...
Article
This study examines the association between parenthood and the growth of personal wealth of women and men over time. We argue that parenthood creates unique restrictions and opportunity structures for mothers and fathers in terms of personal wealth accumulation. Using rich data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (2002, 2007, 2012; N = 28,65...
Article
Intergenerational transmission is a long-standing interest of social science research. However, little attention has been devoted to the study of transmission of relationship quality between several generations of family members. Exploiting multigenerational multi-actor data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), we estimate multilevel models to i...
Article
Objectives: Our study examines cross-national variations in intergenerational relations of partnered parents aged 50 and older with adult non-coresident children by family structure (intact vs stepfamilies) and parent-child relationship type (biological tie vs steprelation). We focus on three European countries-France, Germany, and Russia-which ha...
Chapter
Der Fokus des vorliegenden Beitrags liegt auf den wechselseitigen Einflüssen zwischen familialen Generationenbeziehungen und den demographischen Kernprozessen Fertilität und Nuptialität, Mortalität (einschließlich Gesundheit) sowie Migration. Hierbei sind theoretisch jeweils zwei Wirkungsrichtungen denkbar: (1) Die Wirkung der spezifischen Ausgesta...
Chapter
Substantial regional variation in marriage and fertility patterns continues to exist in Germany. Following a multilevel approach, we exploit longitudinal data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), enhanced by an array of district-level variables, to investigate the extent to which spatial variations in men’s and women’s family formation behaviors...
Book
Das Buch versammelt einschlägige Beiträge im Bereich „Social Demography“, der Schnittstelle von soziologischer und demographischer Forschung. In den Einzelbeiträgen wird die Bedeutung klassischer soziologischer Konzepte, wie des Lebenslaufs, des Generationenzusammenhangs und der sozialen Ungleichheit für demographische Prozesse, vor allem der Ferti...
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Full-text available
Substantial regional variation in marriage and fertility patterns continues to exist in Germany. Following a multilevel approach, we exploit longitudinal data from the German Family Panel (pairfam), enhanced by an array of district-level variables, to investigate the extent to which spatial variations in men’s and women’s family formation behaviors...
Article
Full-text available
Zusammenfassung Obwohl es zahlreiche inhaltliche Schnittstellen zwischen Gegenstandsbereichen der Soziologie und der Demografie gibt, hat sich in Deutschland bislang keine Bevölkerungssoziologie, im Sinne einer in den USA schon früh institutionalisierten „Social Demography“, etablieren können. In diesem einleitenden Beitrag des vorliegenden Sonderh...
Article
Despite a rapid expansion of research on gay and lesbian family issues, a comprehensive account of intergenerational family relationships for a population-based sample of adult homosexual children is still lacking. Using more than 7,500 baseline interviews from the German Family Panel (pairfam), this study aimed to fill this gap. The authors analyz...
Article
Our study contributes to the literature acknowledging the joint role of social networks and social cohesion in shaping individual’s health, focusing on the older population aged 50 and over. Exploiting rich ego-centered social network data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and following the conceptual model of social integr...
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Building on a tripartite model of capitals necessary to perform productive activities and on work suggesting that cumulative (dis-)advantage processes are important mechanisms for life course inequalities, our study set out to investigate the potential role of family social background and inheritance in later life volunteering. We hypothesized that...
Chapter
Angesichts einer andauernden Pluralisierung von Familien- und Lebensformen sowie eines massiven demographischen Wandels mit dauerhaft niedrigen Geburtenziffern und einer stetig steigenden Lebenserwartung stellt sich die Frage nach der zukünftigen Entwicklung und den Solidaritätspotenzialen generationenübergreifender Netzwerke innerhalb von Familien...
Article
Exploiting retrospective data from the SHARELIFE project, we investigate long-term associations between early and later life unemployment spells of at least six months in a sample of more than 13,000 men and women from eleven European countries. Our findings provide, first, evidence for significant differences in the life-course pattern of unemploy...
Chapter
Die Beziehungen zwischen Eltern und ihren Kindern gehören zu den wichtigsten und langlebigsten in der Familie. In seiner Auseinandersetzung mit verschiedenen Definitionen des Begriffs ‚Familie‘ schlägt Schneider (2008, S. 13) vor, diese als „eine exklusive Solidargemeinschaft, die auf relative Dauer angelegt ist“ zu begreifen. Damit wird Familie au...
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Objectives.To provide an overview of the prevalence and profiles of grandparents providing childcare to grandchildren in 2 East Asian countries, China and South Korea, characterized by similar demographic developments and a shared cultural background but having very different contemporary institutional and socioeconomic circumstances.Method.We appl...
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Using pooled cross-sectional data from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we address the question of whether and how parenthood and marital status are associated with various dimensions of elders’ well-being, which we define by elements of the individual’s economic situation, psychological well-being, and...
Article
There is a rapid growth in published knowledge about different aspects of age and aging. While this is highly welcome, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up even with the main insights provided by this literature. Our review thus aims to provide a compact overview of current social science research in three major domains of older people’s li...
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This study uses retrospective life-history data from the SHARELIFE project for an initial assessment of the long-term relationship between individuals' reproductive history and retirement in 13 Continental European countries, focussing in particular on possible gender, cohort, and welfare regime differences. Our analysis provides some weak evidence...
Article
Building on recent research investigating the role of life-course factors (including childhood conditions) and societal context in older Europeans health status, this study investigates the determinants of changes in elders’ health across two waves of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Controlling for individuals’ current...
Article
This study investigates the role of childhood conditions and social inequality in older Europeans' propensity to age successfully, controlling for later life risk factors. Successful aging was assessed following Rowe and Kahn's conceptualization, using baseline interviews from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Eu...

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