Essays on Family Transitions and Income Dynamics: Cross-National Evidence from Survey Data

In recent decades, family structures and dynamics in high-income countries have undergone significant changes. Traditional models corresponding to the nuclear family have become less the norm, with greater variation in household arrangements stemming from delayed and lower fertility, a preference for cohabitation, unstable unions, and more frequent re-partnerships. These evolutions pose new important questions and methodological challenges for demographic research aiming at a deeper understanding of patterns of inequality, intergenerational connections, and social and economic roots of present family life. The dissertation examines how economic conditions may influence family decisions, focusing on three interrelated areas such as first couples’ stability, youth independence, and fertility intentions. It highlights the necessity of using longitudinal data that can track individual life courses over time and decouple personal circumstances from more general structural forces. In the first chapter, the main research question addresses whether income asymmetries within the couple affect the risk of separation. Using the comprehensive UK Household Panel Survey, the study revisits the long-standing question of whether women’s economic independence affects union stability. The findings show that female breadwinner arrangements are associated with moderately higher dissolution risks in UK first partnerships and particularly in the most extreme income asymmetries. However, the association weakens once subjective distress is considered, signaling that broader socioeconomic vulnerability or psychological strain rather than female income dominance per se may underlie instability. The second chapter explores how the economic situation of young adults has changed across 15 high-income countries over the past two decades. Drawing on the harmonized microdata available through the Luxembourg Income Study, the analysis indicates a widespread rise in the poverty risk among independent adults aged between 18 and 30 - a period usually associated with forming unions and starting families - especially in Continental Europe, along with a widening economic gap between generations. Decomposition techniques further stress how a worse prevalence of poverty is often the product of structural forces like declining labor market and tertiary education returns rather than compositional changes in the population. An updated outlook of the economic condition of the youth and its driving forces behind can provide useful guidance for policies aimed at easing the transition to economic independence and stability. The final chapter of the dissertation inspects the role of private financial transfers in shaping fertility intentions by making use of both existing rounds of the Generations and Gender Survey in five European countries. Evidence from the first round is mixed and inconclusive, the recent data instead point to a positive association between large transfers and fertility intentions in contexts like Germany and Austria. While the effects remain limited and uneven across countries, parental transfers receipt may exert an increasing role in influencing fertility planning in specific institutional settings. Overall, the thesis complements the ongoing debate in family demography by providing new evidence on how financial resources may be intertwined with key life transitions. It argues for stronger integration of the economic perspective into family studies and emphasizes the need for more attention to diverse social groups and national contexts, which the increasing availability of longitudinal and comparative data renders now possible.