Michael Gebel

• Professor (Full) at University of Bamberg

This book identifies chances and barriers women face in their transition to adulthood in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria. Adopting a life course perspective, it provides a new integrative micro-macro-theoretical framework and innovative analyses of individual life courses based on longitudinal data.

Labor market insecurities have been growing in Europe and previous research has illustrated that unemployment and insecure jobs negatively affect individuals’ well-being and health. Although empirical evidence suggests that these effects vary substantially across different welfare states, we still know little about the moderating role of specific l...

This article analyzes the individual- and family-level factors that pave the way to the labor market and to formal sector jobs for young women in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Retrospective life history data from a 2017 survey in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan show that higher education attainment has a strong positive impact on labor market...

Background and Aims Adolescent smoking is a health issue and a potential health inequality issue. Education tracking, which is the placement of students into different school types and curricula based on their learning needs or abilities, is an indicator of inequality and risk factor of adolescent smoking. We examined the effect of educational trac...

his chapter summarizes the state-of-the-art with regard to the transition from education to work in the Middle East and Northern African (MENA) region in the context of globalization. First, it describes key development stages of MENA countries and changes of the institutional and structural context in the course of globalization. Then, it synthesi...

Unemployment is a major risk factor of poverty and employment is regarded key to overcoming it. The present study examines how the income poverty risk of unemployed individuals changes in the short and medium term, when they take up work, and whether the effects differ according to the type of employment. The focus is on permanent and fixed-term jo...

This chapter introduces different methods of causal analysis that are increasingly applied in health inequality research. The counterfactual model of causality and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are presented as the two important and complementary conceptual backbones of the various methods of causal inference. Definitions of a causal effect and po...

Research has shown that parents provide considerable support to their children; however, we know little about the influence of young adults’ employment experiences on the support they receive from their parents. We draw on data from the German Family Panel pairfam for birth cohorts 1981–1983 and 1991–1993 and use a first difference panel estimator...

This study investigates how the transition from education to work is related to psychological well-being, measured in terms of depressive symptoms, subjective health and happiness. The focus is on the comparison of young people who were not in employment, education or training (NEET) and those who had a job at the first interview after leaving educ...

This study investigates the hourly wage gap between 25- and 55-year-old temporary and permanent employees across 30 countries worldwide based on Luxembourg Income Study data from 2000 to 2019 supplemented by other survey data. Two-stage multilevel regressions reveal wage disadvantages for temporary workers, particularly for prime-age workers and th...

The possible consequences of the Corona crisis for social inequalities have received a lot of attention in public as well as scientific debates. On the one hand, concerns have been raised that the pandemic intensified pre-existing patterns of social inequality. On the other hand, the crisis has also been seen as an opportunity for social change and...

Given the importance of schools as socializing institutions, a key dimension of children's subjective well-being (SWB) is their perception of school-related aspects. This study complements previous literature on various determinants of children's SWB by focusing on students with special educational needs (SEN). Due to academic challenges, stigmatiz...

Despite education expansion, decreasing fertility rate and economic progress, women still face labor market integration problems and labor market disadvantages compared to men around the world. This applies also to the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) and especially to Muslim societies of the CCA region due to the general weak labor ma...

This working paper provides univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics on youth transitions in Azerbaijan. It is part of a series of working papers characterizing youth transitions of countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is based on research conducted in the project “Opportunities and Barriers at the Transition from Education to Work...

This working paper provides univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics on youth transitions in Tajikistan. It is part of a series of working papers characterizing youth transitions of countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is based on research conducted in the project “Opportunities and Barriers at the Transition from Education to Work...

The present report introduces the overall methodology of semi-structured in-depth interviews for a multiple case study on youth “Not in Education, Employment, or Training” (NEET) in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan, which was conducted within TEW-CCA research project implemented in the above-mentioned countries between 2015 and 2019. We deliver a...

This working paper provides univariate and bivariate descriptive statistics on youth transitions in Georgia. It is part of a series of working papers characterizing youth transitions of countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is based on research conducted in the project “Opportunities and Barriers at the Transition from Education to Work –...

This article aims to investigate if education policies moderate the association between unemployment and well-being among young adults. Based on the capability approach, we argue that education policies mitigate the negative effects of unemployment by providing opportunities for education and thus ways to exit unemployment. Education policies can s...

This methodological report introduces the TEW-CCA Youth Transition Surveys in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan. This international and interdisciplinary collaborative survey project targeted at young people aged 18 to 35 who finished or stopped formal education in the period 2006–2015 in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan. Nationally representati...

This chapter introduces the general methodology of the TEW‐CCA Youth Transition Surveys in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan. This collaborative survey project targeted at young people aged 18 to 35 who finished or stopped formal education in the period 2006–2015 in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Tajikistan. Nationally representative surveys were reached...

One of the key themes covered in the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) are returns to education. Within this wide-ranging field, NEPS focuses on the four following returns dimensions on which education is supposed to have an effect: labor market outcomes, civic engagement, health, and subjective well-being. The transformation of education int...

The latest issue of EXCEPT projects working paper series brings together the empirical results of the project in the six work packages carried out. After a short introduction to the main aims of the project, a short overview of the main results of each work-package is given as bullet-point list. This is followed by more in-depth synthesis of result...

The aim of this working paper is to highlight unsolved issues and empirical data problems that were identified by the EXCEPT research consortium. Against this background new ideas for future research (including new data collections and ideas for policy evaluation) are presented that have been developed by the EXCEPT consortium.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in interest towards the long-term health consequences of early-career job loss and youth unemployment. Relying on detailed retrospective data from the third wave (2008/09) of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) this paper investigates whether an involuntary job loss in the first 10 y...

Ziel dieser Studie ist es, Erkenntnisse über die Rolle von Staat und Familie sowie geschlechtsspezifischen und familiären Rollenvorstellungen in den Ländern des Nahen Ostens und Nordafrikas zu erlangen. Speziell soll thematisiert werden, welches Verständnis von Staat und Familie vorherrscht und wie das Verhältnis zwischen Staat und Familie gesehen...

The size of the middle class has been declining in Germany. Based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984–2013, this article analyses the role of education credentials and employment dynamics in the allocation process to different class positions. Multinomial logistic regression analyses show that persons with the lowest general education...

Rigid employment protection legislation (EPL) has been blamed as the root of youths’ labour market integration problems in Europe. Many European countries have reacted by deregulating employment protection laws, often targeting youths as a group. However, doubts about the effectiveness of EPL reforms have arisen. Against this background, this artic...

Against the background of profound social and economic changes, this paper analyzes patterns of school-to-work transition for four cohorts of Egyptian school leaver during the period from 1970–2012. Using retrospective longitudinal data from the Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey 2012 our analyses reveal for women a U-shaped and for men an L-shaped...

This paper describes and analyzes determinants and changes of the timing of transition to first marriage in Jordan for four birth cohorts born between 1950 and 1989. Using large-scale, nationally representative life history data from the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey 2010 and applying event history analyses, we find clear gender differences in m...

Many young people experience episodes of unemployment and precarious employment such as insecure temporary jobs and skill-inadequate jobs during their school-to-work transition period. This essay summarizes key theoretical ideas and main previous empirical findings on the determinants and career consequences of having such a nonoptimal start into t...

This article investigates the effects of transitions between employment and unemployment on health. It also addresses the question of whether or not the widespread use of temporary employment has altered the positive health effects of employment. Drawing on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the period 1995–2010, we apply difference-in-d...

In this chapter we develop a general theoretical framework for understanding young women’s early life courses and the chances and barriers they face in MENA countries. This framework builds on the life course approach, which is a helpful framework for integrating differing macro- and micro-level perspectives into a single micro-macro theory of youn...

Having discussed the challenges young women face in the education system in chapters 5 and 6, we investigate young women’s chances of labor market integration. In a standard life course sequence, the transition from school to work represents the next central life course event young women face on their way to adulthood. Previous research has shown t...

Following the traditional order of life course events in MENA countries, this chapter discusses the timing and determinants of motherhood. In Chapter 3, we highlighted the striking decline in fertility, maternal mortality, and infant mortality rates in MENA countries during the last two decades. The decline in fertility rates is largely due to dela...

In contrast to many Western countries, marriage is still a universal event in young women’s life courses and is the normative precondition for legitimate sexual relationships and reproduction in MENA countries (Rashad et al., 2005). Marriage represents an important marker in the transition to adulthood because young women leave their parent’s home...

As discussed in the introduction to this book, young women in MENA countries are on the rise in some life course domains but not in others. We observe a rapid educational expansion and sharp drops in fertility rates, yet these social changes did not come along with an increase in female labor force participation as was observed in many other world...

As discussed in the previous chapter, education is a central determinant of future life chances and is an important stage in a young woman’s transition to adulthood. In modern societies, the formal education system is the central institution where one accumulates human capital and acquires formal certificates, which are used by employers as signals...

The previous chapter showed that finding a first job is not an easy task for young women in MENA countries. High levels of unemployment and long search durations are significant challenges that young women face when engaging in the job search process. Even when women succeed in entering a first job, it is still not guaranteed that the first job wil...

While the previous chapter addressed the decision of young women to either participate in the labor market or fully engage in housework, this chapter focuses on those women who actively engage in the job search after they have left the education system. Information regarding central labor market characteristics in chapters 1 and 3 revealed that you...

Education plays an important role in the growth of an individual and development of a society. Numerous studies from developing countries show that female educational expansion increases economic growth, and lowers fertility rates and infant mortality rates. Such expansion also promotes children’s education because educated women are more likely to...

The following empirical analyses use high-quality longitudinal national data sets (see Table 4.1). These retrospective life course and school leaver surveys were explicitly designed for the kinds of analyses we conducted. They provide very detailed information on the processes of the transition to adulthood we are studying, including longitudinal i...

In the previous chapter we emphasized the central role of the social context for young women’s individual life courses. To fully understand the social situation of young women in MENA countries it is important to look at the specific context that shapes their transition into adulthood in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria. For this purpose we conduct d...

This article’s aim is to explore the role of personal contacts at the transition from school to work and compare these effects across countries with various levels of market development. Using data from school-leaver surveys for Ukraine and Croatia and applying propensity score matching, we focus on the probability of finding initial employment and...

While many previous studies on temporary work have found disadvantages for temporary workers compared to workers with a permanent contract, this study makes the comparison to the alternative of unemployment. Applying a dynamic propensity-score matching approach based on British, German, and Swiss panel data, it is shown that taking up a temporary j...

While many previous studies on temporary work have found disadvantages for temporary workers as compared to workers with a permanent contract, this study compares temporary work to the alternative of unemployment. Specifically, this paper investigates the potential integrative power of taking up a temporary job for unemployed workers as compared to...

This article investigates the effects of privatized and marketized higher education on inequalities in education attainment and labour market outcomes in Poland and Ukraine. Drawing on representative samples of tertiary graduates, our analyses show that students from advantageous social backgrounds are more likely to enter state-funded studies. Reg...

This study explores how patterns of institutional differentiation in higher education systems are linked to educational inequalities at the transition from higher education to work. We measure institutional differentiation within countries along two dimensions: degree level that mainly structures educational inequalities in occupational status atta...

Before exploring the selectivity of educational attainment in detail, this article extensively describes the contours of educational systems in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. These countries provide an interesting setting in view of their post-secondary education expansion and differentiation, as well as their variation in the degree...

Poland has become an interesting outlier in Europe in terms of employment flexibility, with an extremely high incidence of fixed-term contracts, particularly at labour market entry. In this article, detailed retrospective data from the Polish School Leavers Survey are used to analyse the dynamics of entry and exit from fixed-term contracts. The res...

This chapter discusses the school-to-work transition and early career processes in Ukraine during the reform period. It provides interesting insights about the chances of youths to find work in a country where market and other reforms were delayed or even not yet efficiently implemented. It examines whether and what kind of education resources are...

This chapter reviews key results and conclusions from the other chapters in this book, focusing in particular on the consequences of educational expansion for young people and the effectiveness of secondary programs in integrating young people into the labor market. It also summarizes results from cohort analyses in Russia, Estonia, and the Czech R...

This chapter examines the youth labor market integration during the transformation years after 1989. During these years after 1989, transformation entailed pervasive economic restructuring processes, which induced rapid changes in the occupational structures. A strong deindustrialization of the formerly over-industrialized socialist East German sec...

This chapter presents how transformation processes and highly diversified education systems have interacted to restructure the transition from school to work. It provides the theoretical and methodological backgrounds of the country studies. It focuses on the labor market outcomes of specific educational degrees and their changes over the course of...

After the breakdown of socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, the role of education systems in preparing students for the “real world” changed. Though young people were freed from coercive state institutions, the shift to capitalism made the transition from school to work much more precarious and increased inequality in early career outcomes. Thi...

In this article we use comparative micro data for 15 European countries covering the period 1992-2007 to study the impact of labor market reforms on the skill-related individual risk of holding a temporary contract and the risk of being unemployed. Our results indicate no general increase in either of these skill gaps. Using two-step multilevel ana...

In der soziologischen Forschungstradition gilt der Zusammenhang zwischen familiärem Hintergrund, individuellem Bildungserfolg und folglich dem späteren Karriereerfolg als gesichert (Blau und Duncan 1967; Müller 1975). Dieser über Bildung vermittelte Nexus zwischen sozialer Herkunft und späteren Lebenschancen wird als Zeichen mangelnder sozialer Mob...

This article investigates the effects of temporary employment at labour market entry on subsequent individual careers, drawing on data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) from the period 199 I to 2007. The results show that German temporarily employed entrants suffer from higher initial wage pen...

This article uses comparative micro data from the 2004 European Union Labour Force Survey (EULFS) for 23 European countries to study the impact of labour market institutions on the youth relative temporary employment probability. We find relatively high temporary employment rates for young workers in all countries but also a large cross-country var...

This paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues of endogeneity of schooling and its heterogeneous ret...

Fixed-term contracts have become very relevant in the transition from school to work. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for the period 1984–2006, this article analyses differences in the timing of receiving a fixed-term contract or a permanent contract throughout the duration of first-job search and whether fixed-term contract...

Zusammenfassung Vor dem Hintergrund der jüngsten, teils kontroversen wissenschaftlichen Debatte zur Auswirkung ökonomischer Unsicherheit auf die Familiengründung analysieren wir in diesem Beitrag die Fertilitätskonsequenzen der zwei wohl wichtigsten Indikatoren ökonomischer Unsicherheit - befristeter Beschäftigungsverhältnisse und Arbeitslosigkeit...

"While previous research on temporary employment has shown that certain labour market groups are more likely than others to enter this kind of employment, there has been scant research on the question concerning to what extent these allocation patterns have changed over time. Against the background of pervasive structural and institutional changes...

This chapter begins with a short overview of the economic context of transformation, identifying important contextual factors such as the diversity of existing initial conditions and institutional economic reforms. It follows with an examination of trends and cross-country differences in labour market dynamics of the ten CEE countries. The focus li...

This chapter aims to identify key labour market patterns in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that have emerged during the transition from state socialism to a market economy and integration into the European Union (EU). Labour market developments can be interpreted as the outcome of interactions between general economic developments and...

The expansion of the European Union (EU) has put an end to the East-West division of Europe. At the same time it has increased the cultural heterogeneity, social disparities and economic imbalances within the EU, exemplified in the lower living standards and higher unemployment rates in some of the new member states. This important new reference wo...

Die Expertise befasst sich mit der Situation f�r Geisteswissenschaftler auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt im Vergleich zu anderen Akademikern und zum Arbeitsmarkt in Gro�britannien. Datengrundlage sind der Mikrozensus und der British Labour Force Survey. Geisteswissenschaftler erzielen in Deutschland, auch wenn man auf individuelle Eigenschaften und i...

Ziel dieser Dokumentation ist es, einen �berblick �ber den Forschungsstand zum Monitoring und Benchmarking im Bereich der Arbeitsmarktpolitik zu geben. Der Fokus richtet sich dabei auf allgemeine Definitionen, generelle Vorgehensweisen, ausgew�hlte Fallbeispiele, sowie bestehende Probleme und die Kritik an den Konzepten. --