New Realities after Early Widowhood: Reconfiguring Work-Family Dynamics from a Quantitative Perspective

Margaux Tocqueville , French institute of demographics studies

This presentation is about early widowhood experience, in France. Early widowhood remains a relatively overlooked life event in demographic and sociological research. The term “widowhood” is often reserved for legally married couples whose union ends with a partner’s death. In this paper, we adopt an extended, de facto definition that includes individuals who experience the death of a co-resident partner, regardless of marital status. Early widowhood is defined as experiencing such a loss before age 55. Despite its profound impact on individuals’ lives, early widowhood remains a marginal topic in demographic research as it falls between research fields: too exceptional for separation studies, yet too young for most studies on widowhood. Its entanglement with working age suggests that early widowhood entails specific consequences, especially in the reconfiguration of work and family life. We formulate two hypotheses. First, that early widowhood has a stronger impact on parents than on childless individuals, given the need to reorganise family and professional life. Second, that widowed fathers may be more likely to rely on third-party support, which may soften the impact of their partner’s loss on their employment and reduce the need to adjust working time. Using data from the French Permanent Demographic Sample, we conduct a quantitative analysis of activity rates and transitions from full-time to part-time employment. A discrete-time logistic regression model is applied to estimate the likelihood of a part-time transition and the likelihood of being employed in a given year following widowhood.

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 Presented in Session 97. Economic and Health Inequalities after Union Dissolution