Laura Bernardi – författare

The Research Handbook on Partnering across the Life Course is an interdisciplinary collaboration by researchers in demography, sociology, psychology, and law. Chapters discuss marriage, cohabitation, and relationships, covering LGBTQ+, long-distance, arranged, polyamorous, and living apart together (LAT) partnerships. They address partnerships across the life course, from formation, including online dating and hook-up culture, to break-ups, re-partnering, and partnerships in later life. The contributing authors analyse the dynamics within a partnership, focusing on key aspects like sex, money, and children, as well as related factors such as family, health, gender, and migration, along with their impacts. Ultimately, the Research Handbook examines diversity in partnerships across the globe and explores the roles of the economy and the welfare state.

Presenting innovative insights on relationship dynamics, this Research Handbook is a crucial resource for students and scholars across the social sciences working on family and gender studies.

Over the past decades Europe has witnessed fundamental changes of its population dynamics and population structure. Fertility has fallen below replacement level in almost all European countries, while childbearing behavior and family formation have become more diverse. Life expectancy has increased in Western Europe for both females and males, but has been declining for men in some Eastern European countries. Immigration from non-European countries has increased substantially, as has mobility within Europe. These changes pose major challenges to population studies, as conventional theoretical assumptions regarding demographic behavior and demographic development seem unfit to provide convincing explanations of the recent demographic changes.

This book, derived from the symposium on “The Demography of Europe” held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany in November 2007 in honor of Professor Jan M. Hoem, brings together leading population researchers in the area of fertility, family, migration, life-expectancy, and mortality. The contributions present key issues of the new demography of Europe and discuss key research advances to understand the continent’s demographic development at the turn of the 21st century.