Post-doctorats

Promoteurs : Schoumaker Bruno (UCLouvain), Bartiaux Françoise (UCLouvain)
Financement : FNRS

Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to climate change and many people in this country are vulnerable to the adverse impacts of extreme weather events. My project aims to explore how people living in areas prone to extreme events such as floods, cyclones, and drought perceive about climate change and climate change impacts. This project also tries to explore how climate change perception varies with different extreme weather events and its relationship with fertility decision. This study proposes to compare the variations of fertility decisions with the impacts of different extreme events in Bangladesh. This study tries to calculate fertility differentials and trends for highly flood affected and less affected areas in Bangladesh by using GPS coordinates and census data. This project also aims to enhance a comprehensive and multidisciplinary understanding of Bangladeshi people representations on climate change and their perception about the impacts of climate change on fertility decision.

Promoteur : Eggerickx Thierry (UCLouvain)
Financement : FSR et actions Marie Curie de la Commission européenne

À partir de l’exploitation inédite des données rétrospectives et individuelles des recensements belges et français de la seconde moitié du 20ème siècle, cette recherche a pour but de reconstituer la vie génésique des générations féminines nées à partir des années 1890 jusqu’aux années 1940. La prise en compte de différents milieux dans un ensemble géographiquement restreint mais composés de populations très hétérogènes – langues (français, flamand), cultures (Nord et Sud de l’Europe), activités économiques (villes industrielles, bourgeoises, commerçantes), situations géographiques (villes portuaires, isolées, frontalières) – permettra d’affiner, d’enrichir et de mettre en regard les conclusions des monographies existantes ; notamment en ce qui concerne l’assimilation extrêmement rapide des comportements urbains par les nouveaux arrivants.

Promoteurs : Baudin Thomas, Rizzi Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : ARC «Family Transformation – Incentives and Norms»

La première partie de ce post-doc consiste à analyser les niveaux d’infécondité des précurseurs du déclin de la fécondité en France en s’appuyant sur la recherche effectuée par Jean-Pierre Bardet (1983) pour essayer de comprendre le rôle des couples sans enfants dans ce processus. La seconde partie du post-doc porte sur la remise en couple des pères selon le mode de garde des enfants. À travers l’exploitation de la nouvelle enquête de l’INED, EPIC (Étude des parcours individuels et conjugaux), il s’agit de comprendre si les pères qui ont la garde de leurs enfants (partagée ou en totalité) ont des comportements de remise en couple qui diffèrent de ceux qui n’en ont pas la garde.

Promoteur : Schoumaker Bruno (UCLouvain)
Financement : ARC

Ce projet s'étend de 2015 à 2020 et réunit des juristes, des sociologues et des démographes pour étudier les aspirations, le développement du parcours de vie, la satisfaction de la vie et la capacité d'agentivité des primo-arrivants en Belgique dans une perspective holistique. Le projet examine les possibilités offertes par le cadre juridique pour développer les aspects de la vie susmentionnés, ainsi comme il ressort des entretiens qualitatifs, des données administratives longitudinales et des données d'enquête liées. Théoriquement, le projet mobilise des idées à partir de l'approche des capacités, de la perspective du parcours de vie et des droits de l'homme pour contourner une approche empirique des moyens et des catégories de risques fixes. Le projet de recherche postdoctorale de Sarah Carpentier vise à développer des mesures pour le développement du parcours de vie et des libertés dans les années qui suivent l'arrivée des migrants sur la base de données administratives et d'enquêtes liées. Comme la carrière socio-économique peut jouer un rôle d'ouvre-porte pour le développement du parcours de vie, l'étude commence par l'examen des carrières socio-économiques. La stabilité, la volatilité et la mobilité dans les carrières socio-économiques des migrants ayant différents statuts légaux à l'entrée sont étudiées. En outre, le projet examine comment la stabilité, la volatilité et la mobilité sont vécues subjectivement et liées aux aspirations

Promotrice : Rizzi Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : FNRS

The theory of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) has often been proposed to understand changing family profiles not only in western societies but also in eastern societies. Currently, in Asian societies such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, many features of the SDT have been observed, including the low fertility rate, late marriage and childbearing, increasing singlehood, surging divorce. However, the ingredients of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births seem to be missing in these societies; and there are also very few up-to-date empirical studies to investigate whether the observed changes in family behavior have reflected the ideational changes. Therefore, this research project takes efforts to fill in these gaps. The project aims 1) to investigate the prevalence and trends of cohabitation and non-marital births in the five Asian societies over the past decade, 2) to identify the factors associated with these behaviors, and 3) to reconstruct and compare the family normative frameworks between the West and the East.

Promoteurs : Eggerickx Thierry (UCLouvain), Rizzi Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : FSR (UCLouvain)

La seconde transition démographique (STD) a été développée pour comprendre les transformations socio-démographiques en Europe du Nord-ouest à partir des années 1970. De nombreuses dimensions de la STD ont été étudiées dans la littérature, mais la dimension spatiale de ces changements démographiques reste beaucoup moins étudiée. Ce projet propose de combler ces manques en analysant la diffusion spatiale des changements démographiques de la STD en France et en Belgique depuis 1970, et à un niveau géographique fin. Les objectifs du projet sont les suivants : 1/ Décrire comment la STD se propage dans l’espace, en questionnant en particulier les effets de frontières (politiques et culturelles) ; 2/ Identifier les facteurs qui expliquent ce schéma spatial ; 3/ Analyser l’impact des migrations sur la progression de la STD dans un territoire.

Promoter : Rizzi Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : MOVE-IN Louvain project cofunded by European Commission Marie Curie Actions

My project is to evaluate the effect of work-family life histories on retirement behaviors among women. This proceeds by comparing countries with different conditions of reconciliation between family life and work. By doing so, I involve the themes of ageing, gender and the relationship between the life course, work, and family life. The project comprises three papers. The first concerns the effects of work and family trajectories on retirement intentions: a comparison of 13 European countries. The second is about associations between women’s retirement intentions and the subsequent retirement behaviors in South Korea, by addressing the question of who makes their wishes come true. The third focuses on changes in women’s retirement intentions over time in Europe from 2004 to 2013.

Promoteur : Bruno Schoumaker (UCLouvain)
Financement : FSR (UCLouvain)

At the end of 2012, following the media coverage of a complaint against a pharmaceutical company by a young woman who had suffered a stroke and was blaming it on her use of new-generation oral contraception, a media controversy, also called “pill scare” broke out in France and echoed in the French speaking media in Belgium and in Switzerland, two countries were the pill is also the most widely used method of contraception. As a result, pill use dropped in France and in Belgium while in Switzerland a decrease in pill sales was observed and social inequalities in access to contraceptives available under prescription have increased in France. Using data from 11 representative cross-sectional surveys conducted in Belgium, France and Switzerland, we compare recent trends in contraceptive uses in the three countries according to women’s social background in order to know how “pill scare” differently affect contraceptive practices in the three countries characterized by great differences in health care insurance reimburses medical consultation and contraceptive methods. I will also seek to understand, by conducting qualitative interviews in Belgium and Switzerland, to what extent these changes are result from difficulties in accessing certain contraceptives or from consumption practices for health care and medical goods that differ according to women’s socio-economic background.

Promoteur : Bruno Schoumaker (UCLouvain)
Financement : UCLouvain

In Europe, the global economic recession of the late 2000s strongly affected PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). The rapid deterioration of the labor market conditions affecting natives and immigrants from these countries led to an increase in outmigration to Western and Northern European countries less affected by the crisis, such as Belgium. To understand how economic crises modulate the selection process of migration differently among men and women according to their migration status, we study immigration of people came from PIIGS to Belgium before and after the crisis of the late 2000s among natives (primary migrants) and non-natives (secondary migrants). We also study primary migrants and secondary migrants’ emigration from Belgium according to their insertion on the Belgian labor market before and after the crisis.

Promoteur : Rizzi Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : MOVE-IN Louvain project cofunded by European Commission Marie Curie Actions

China is a developing society that has not only experienced remarkable economic growth over the past few decades, but has also faced a series of demographic changes and challenges, such as the reduction of marriage and fertility, the diffusion of cohabitation, and the rise of divorce. So far, one study on marriage and three studies on divorce have been conducted. All these studies provide empirical evidence that socioeconomic changes at the macro level interacted with behaviour changes at the micro level. This project not only improves our understanding of the family dynamics in Chinese society, but also give implications for life-course transitions in developing societies at large.

Promoteur : Rizzi Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : FSR et actions Marie Curie de la Commission européenne

The project focuses on well-being consequences of difficult life transitions, i.e. transitions into unemployment and into parenthood. It also investigates the buffering effect of support received from family and other networks during these periods. Literature has shown the negative effect of unemployment on wellbeing, and suggested that in the long run parenthood also has a negative effect. Moreover, these effects are heterogeneous across individuals and social contexts. The evidence on the buffering effect of family and nonfamily support in the context of parenthood and unemployment is scarce. The results showed that the buffering effect of family and non-family support during the transition to unemployment in Germany is rather weak, which is not in line with theoretical expectations and suggests the need for further investigations, which would broaden our understanding of social support during difficult life transitions. The study of support from relatives during parenthood in Switzerland demonstrated that support increases slightly when people become parents, but the effect on subjective well-being of parents is small and sometimes inconsistent with the buffering hypothesis.

Promoteur : RIZZI Ester (UCLouvain)
Financement : ARC

The project focuses on two questions. First, we analyze the parental gender preference using the recent developments of happiness research. Second, we analyze the role of religiosity in moderating the relationship between parenthood and subjective well-being. Both studies aim at providing general conclusions, thus they use broad comparative data sets as their empirical base: European Social Survey and World Values Study. The project contributes to better understanding fertility decisions and consequences of parenthood and childlessness for contemporary societies, and to better understanding the interplay between religiosity and fertility decisions.

Promotrice : Ester Rizzi (UCLouvain)
Financement : BELSPO

As societies age, the well-being of the elderly increasingly becomes a priority and challenge. CREW is an inter-disciplinary team from six institutions in five countries poised to examine the interrelationships between social participation (in the forms of paid work and caregiving) and health and wellbeing. Our proposed research covers four broad topics. First, we investigate the determinants of health and wellbeing in older age and critically examine new and old measures. Second, we describe patterns of caregiving and the impact of providing care on the wellbeing of caregivers. Third, we analyze the challenges faced by pension sys-tems as consequence of changes in family dynamics and work patterns. Finally, we examine the population of older adults without close kin, analyse its characteristics, and how the welfare state shapes their well-being. Gender and welfare policies are transversal themes of each topic, as they shape all of the dynamics analyzed. CREW fills key policy-relevant gaps in existing research, ultimately contributing to knowledge which inform poli-cies to guarantee high quality of ageing and equal opportunities for successful ageing for both men and women and for people of different socio-economic groups.

Promoteur : Eggerickx Thierry (UCLouvain)
Financement : FNRS

Ce projet met en évidence les mécanismes qui ont marqué l’évolution de la mortalité à Venise au 19ème siècle, l’une des plus grandes villes italiennes, où les taux de mortalité sont parmi les plus élevés en Europe. Cela suppose d’observer les différentes composantes de la mortalité, par cause, sexe et âge, leur distribution dans l’espace et le temps, et leurs influences réciproques. Une étude détaillée de la mortalité est rendue possible par un ensemble exceptionnellement riche de données extraites des registres de la population d’une ville composée d’environ 130 000 habitants. D’autres données concernent les conditions de logements (disponibilité de l’eau et de l’assainisse­ment), les causes de décès, les températures quotidiennes et les rapports hebdomadaires des prix des denrées alimentaires.

Promoteur : Philippe Bocquier (UCLouvain)
Financement : Globmig project

In Asia, internal migration has led to rapid expansion of urban borders. However, as rural/urban definition varies by countries and across time, and in some circumstances absent, it is hard to come up with a robust estimation of historical trend of urbanization. To fill this gap, this project is dedicated to provide a harmonized estimation of urbanization and to understand to what extent has internal migration contributed to changes in urbanisation. We used micro-level data available at IPUMS-international, DHC among others, and adjusted our estimates according to those published by the World Urbanization Prospect.

Promoteur : Philippe Bocquier
Financement : Globmig project

The mobility transition hypothesizes that in parallel to the demographic transition, defined patterns of migration are notable. These shifts in migration are also expected to change over the course of urbanization. We aim to investigate empirically whether a mobility transition in Asia exists, or whether it diverges from theory, by directly estimating migration from 27 census samples. We pool together census from ten Asian countries, and covering four decades, and model migration rates by sex, age and educational attainment using Poisson models. Preliminary results suggest that internal net migration fluctuated over time, and peaked in the 2000s in Asia. Intra-rural migration is especially high throughout the period, suggesting that countries in Asia are still at relatively early stages of the mobility transition. That said, there is also relatively high migration within other urban areas. When we examine the age profile of internal migrants, we note that both rural to urban - 31 - and urban to rural out-migration follow similar schedules to known migration age profiles, peaking in early adult years, but rural to urban rates are substantially higher in these ages.

Promoteurs : Eggerickx Thierry (UCLouvain), Burnay Nathalie (FUNDP)
Financement : FNRS

Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le débat sur l’âge à la retraite et dans le cadre théorique de l’analyse des parcours de vie. Les objectifs visent à (1) retracer l’évolution de la gestion individuelle et collective des fins de carrière, du 19ème siècle à nos jours ; (2) comprendre les interactions entre trajectoires professionnelle et familiale en fin de vie active ; et (3) comprendre l’organisation de cette période au regard des parcours migratoires et des relations intergénérationnelles.

Promoteurs : Thierry Eggerickx (UCLouvain), Xavier Rousseaux (UCLouvain)
Financement : BELSPO/BRAIN

Cette recherche, menée dans le cadre du projet IPV-PRO&POL (Intimate Partner Violence: Impact, Processes, Evolution and Related Public Policies in Belgium), vise d’une part à étudier l’évolution de la mortalité violente en Belgique, et d’autre part à comprendre plus particulièrement les mécanismes en jeu dans les violences entre conjoints et les homicides conjugaux. Les données utilisées proviennent du Registre national, des recensements, du système informatique des parquets correctionnels (TPI), mais aussi de dossiers de justice et d’entretiens avec des auteurs et des victimes de violences.

Promoteurs : Thierry Eggerickx (UCLouvain), Bruno Schoumaker (UCLouvain)
Financement : BELSPO

L’objectif de ce projet est de constituer une «archive belge» des enquêtes et données collectées en sciences humaines. Pratiquement, il s’agit de construire un outil de dépôt des données d’enquêtes réalisées en sciences humaines dans les différentes universités belges de manière à pouvoir les réutiliser pour d’autres projets.

Promoteur : Masquelier Bruno (UCLouvain)
Financement : MOVE-IN Louvain project cofunded by European Commission Marie Curie Actions

Since the inception of the Millennium development goals, the world has cut both the rate and number of child deaths by more than one half. Though more than 6 million children under age five had still died in 2015 and half of these deaths have occurred in the six countries including India. India has the highest number of child deaths in the world, with significant regional variations within the country. Country-level estimates could well obscure spatial or socioeconomic inequalities in mortality that might well exceed intercountry differences. With decentralized planning, it has become inevitable to monitor child level mortality at the district level. Measuring district level child mortality in India is also important because of the fact that there is large interdistrict variation in the level of socioeconomic development and health care condition. Sample Registration System provides the estimates on infant and child mortality at the national level and for major states of India annually. However, very little is known about the long term changes in child mortality rate at the district level. This study aims to develop estimates of child mortality rate at the district level to describe trends in survival chances of child over the last few decades and examine the spatial pattern of child mortality risk in India. This study also purposes to assess the effect and contribution of health interventions, socioeconomic and demographic factors including fertility on child mortality at the district level and examine the heterogeneity of the relationship between major risk factors and child mortality. ​

Promoteurs : Bocquier Philippe (UCLouvain), Docquier Frédéric (UCLouvain)
Financement : ARC - GLOBMIG

The research conducted under the GLOBMIG project aims at exploring new data sources to understand internal and international migration patterns. In particular, it combines: i) socio-economic and migration data from various censuses, surveys, as well as the Gallup data, ii) Big Data on cell-phone owners, iii) geo-referenced data on climate change and conflict. New methodologies (e.g., data mining, machine learning algorithms) to analyze the various data will be applied and compared to more traditional approaches. Another intention of this research is to study the interactions between internal and international migration, as well as their relation to the urbanization dynamics. In this framework, the goal is to quantify the internal migration trends by capital, other urban and rural areas in Africa and determine the net migration contribution to the urbanization process.

Promotrice : Christine Schnor (UCLouvain)
Financement : ERC

Internal migration (long-distance moves within national borders) is generally assumed to be beneficial to individuals and households. The FamilyTies project has been designed to make a decisive contribution to a much more comprehensive explanation of internal migration and its labour-market outcomes than current, mainly economic, explanations have achieved thus far. It introduces a novel perspective on internal migration and immobility, which focuses on the role of family outside the household in deciding on whether and where to relocate, and which takes into account contemporary family complexity: the family ties perspective. The aim is to identify the role of family ties in internal migration, immobility and labour-market outcomes.