A Multidimensional Typology of Contextual Resource Configurations Characterising the First Ten Years in a Child’s Life Using Dutch Register Data

Max Reichert , Erasmus Univeristy Rotterdam
Tom Emery, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Alzbeta Bartova, Leiden University

Among critical periods throughout the life course, the first years of childhood are the most crucial from a sociodevelopmental and life course perspective. Inequalities in the early years are driven by parental factors, and processes generating and buffering vulnerability unfold in the wealth, income, and family trajectories of the parents and their immediate environment. In this study, we propose a holistic, child-centered analysis using population-scale Dutch administrative data. We ask: What multidomain configurations characterize the first ten years in a child’s life in the Netherlands; which children experience which transitions between these configurations over time; and how do trajectories differ by maternal education, migration background, or union status at birth? We construct multidomain trajectories for all children born in the Netherlands in 2014, and their parents, combining wealth, employment and earnings, residential mobility, household complexity, parity, and policy-conditioned resources. We apply mixture hidden Markov models (MHMM) using seqHMM to derive a typology of latent multidomain states and to estimate transition probabilities over time. This allows us to characterize advantaged and precarious configurations and to identify pathways marked by stability and upward or downward mobility. We examine the composition of typical pathways and explore inequality-generating interactions during and after the transition to parenthood over time.

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 Presented in Session P3. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 3