=Paper= {{Paper |id=Vol-1627/paper3 |storemode=property |title=Studying of the Family Formation Trajectories Deinstitutionalization in Russia Using Sequence Analysis |pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1627/paper3.pdf |volume=Vol-1627 |authors=Ekaterina Mitrofanova,Alyona Artamonova |dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/cla/MitrofanovaA16 }} ==Studying of the Family Formation Trajectories Deinstitutionalization in Russia Using Sequence Analysis== https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1627/paper3.pdf

Studying Family Formation Trajectories’
Deinstitutionalization in Russia Using Sequence Analysis

Ekaterina S. Mitrofanova1, Alyona V. Artamonova1
1National Research University Higher School of Economics

mitrofanovy@yandex.ru, alyona89152694371@yandex.ru

Abstract. This study focuses on changing family formation trajectories in the
Russian Federation. In European countries, pathways to family ceased being
stable several decades ago, while in Russia – as in any post-socialist country –
such features of life course deinstitutionalization as postponement of marriage,
rising cohabitation, and reordering of events were revealed only in the 1990s and
explained from the perspective of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT).
Our aim is to demonstrate how family formation trajectories of men and women
from different generations were transforming with the incorporation of data
mining. The three-wave panel data of the Russian part of the “Generations and
Gender Survey” (2004, 2007, 2011; N=5321) and the retrospective data of the
survey “Person, Family, Society” (2013; N=4477) are used for achieving this
aim. Sequence Analysis shows that generations born after 1970 started to exhibit
de-standardized family formation trajectories. As the proportion of Russians who
raise children in cohabitation or while single rises, such models of behavior
become more widely accepted and practiced in contemporary Russia. Women
experience more events in the family trajectory, take steps toward family
formation earlier, and stay alone with children more often than men. Matrimonial
and reproductive behavior has become diverse, proving that Russia fully exhibits
the SDT.

Keywords: family formation trajectories, matrimonial and reproductive
behavior, Sequence Analysis

1 Introduction

People’s family formation trajectories have considerably changed in recent
decades. In many European countries, marital union with children has been the
only acceptable method of family organization for a long time. Since the 1990s,
a couple may be formed not only through marriage but also through
cohabitation, people may postpone the birth of children or remain childfree, and
a union may not be dissolved solely through divorce but also through
separation; because of new freedom of thinking and behaving and people’s
orientation to individual self-development, this is one of the distinctive features
of modern society [1].
The theorists of the Second Demographic Transition approach, headed by
pioneers Lesthaeghe and Van de Kaa, explain the transformation in
demographic behavior as the result of the broad and long-term changes in the
norms and values that many countries witnessed between the mid-1960s and
the end of the 1980s [2]. Mayer [3] claims that, since the 1960s, societies have
embraced so-called “hedonistic individualism”, which includes alternative
lifestyles, emphasizing individual fulfillment and self-expression rather than
sacrifices to the family, traditional values and altruistic orientations regarding
children and the collective good. Instead of following the tradition of marriage,
young people realize their own personal goals of self-expression and enjoyment
[4].
All the SDT changes in paths to family formation started in Western
European countries and followed the model of the European type of marriage
prevailing west of Hajnal's line. Eastern European Russia displays demographic
outcomes of the SDT in atypical fashion. Growing cohabitation rates alongside
declining marital rates emerged in the Soviet Union in the middle of the 1980s,
years before the fall of socialism [5]. Zakharov [6] revealed that Russians born
after 1970s already started to demonstrate all features of SDT (e.g. the
formation of partnerships outside marriage, the rise in non-marital childbearing,
and the postponement of marriage). Mills showed that new pathways to family
in Russia, contrary to SDT theory, are prevailing among less-educated people,
reminiscent of a ‘pattern of disadvantage’ concept. It makes Russia look more
like the United States than Europe with regards to life course
deinstitutionalization.
Taking this complexity of matrimonial and reproductive behavior into
consideration, we decided to trace the family formation trajectories’
deinstitutionalization in Russia based on gender-generational differences using
Sequence Analysis.

2 Hypotheses

The standardized trajectory of “Soviet” generation Russia starts from
singlehood and includes universal marriage with at least one child. The
proportions of those single with children and those secondly married were
minimal. From the middle of the 1980s until the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Russians turned to Western European countries’ family lifestyles [7]. The
average ages of marriage have been rising since the early 1990s. In 1993, the
ages for men and women were 23.9 and 21.8 years, respectively. In 1999 and
2004 they consisted of ages 25.0 and 26.1 for men and ages 23.1 and 23.3 for
women [1].
According to Mills and her co-authors, there is a high proportion of single
parents in Russia (even higher than in some Western European countries),
which may be caused by a high divorce rate and particularly high adult male
mortality, which is largely due to alcohol-related deaths [7].
Taking into consideration the information above, we decided to verify two
groups of hypotheses.
Group 1. Gender:
─ Women take steps to family earlier than men;
─ Women stay alone with children more often than men;
─ Women experience more family formation events than men;
Group 2. Generations:
─ De-standardization of family formation trajectories was demonstrated first
by representatives of the first “Modern” generation (1970-79 birth cohort);
─ “Modern” generations experience more varied matrimonial and
reproductive events than the representatives of “Soviet” generations.
─ To test these hypotheses, we decided to apply Sequence Analysis, which
requires longitudinal or retrospective data.

3 Data

We used the panel data of the Russian part of the Generations and Gender
Survey (GGS-panel: 2004, 2007 and 2011) and retrospective data of the
“Person, Family, Society” survey (PFS: 2013). We choose these surveys
because their designs apply the Life Course approach, which tends to
understand different types of demographic events as a chain of interconnected
processes. The questions about life course events were asked in a very accurate
and detailed way. Most of the dates contain not only years but also months of
starts and ends of events. We should mention that the questions about children
were asked so as to show our interest in the biological children of respondents.
To work correctly with sequences, it was necessary to constrain the ages of
events. 15 years as the lower age point was chosen because it is the beginning
of possible reproductive behavior. Obviously, there were respondents who
enter into their first union or have their first child before reaching this age but
such atypical cases are outside the scope of our study. In the samples of used
datasets there are respondents who, at the time of the survey, were 25 years old
(GGS-2011, third wave) and even 18 years old (PFS-2013). Marriages in
Russia were early and universal for a long time, and almost all representatives
of the Soviet generations started their unions by the age of 25. We supposed
that younger generations demonstrate a delay in the start of their first unions in
comparison with the Soviet generations. That is why, if we want to trace the
change in the age of the first union formation, we should analyze a wide range
of ages. However, the representatives of the older generations have lived longer
lives than the youth, and some unique cases of the first unions at ages over 40
years can shift the average age. Moreover, it is not correct to compare the full
matrimonial biographies of people who reached the age of final celibacy and
people who only started their union histories. Taking into account all these
arguments, we decided to impose a limit on the age of matrimonial and
reproductive events occurring. After considering several options, we limited the
age of entry into first union at 35 years, no matter whether not all respondents
finished the transition to family life by the age of 35.
The final GGS and PFS datasets contain 5321 and 4477 cases, respectively.
In order to analyze the generational aspect of matrimonial behavior, we
divided our samples into two key groups: the “Soviet” generations (1930-39,
1940-49, 1950-59, 1960-66 in GGS and 1960-69 in PFS), who socialized before
the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the “Modern” generation (1970-79, 1980-
86 in GGS and 1970-79, 1980-89, 1990-95 in PFS), who socialized after it [8].
The proportions of men and women in different generations of GGS and PFS
can be found in the Table 1.
Table 1. Proportions of men and women in Russian generations
GGS PFS
Generation Gender Absolute Absolute
Percentages Percentages
numbers numbers
Men 192 25% - -
1930-1939
Women 585 75% - -
Men 214 28% - -
1940-1949
Women 552 72% - -
Men 387 30% - -
1950-1959
Women 923 70% - -
Men 423 36% - -
1960-1969
Women 761 64% - -
Men 325 36% 798 48%
1970-1979
Women 585 64% 855 52%
1980- Men 158 42% 939 49%
1986(89) Women 216 58% 988 51%
Men - - 473 53%
1990-1995
Women - - 424 47%

4 Methodology

In recent years, there has been a strongly growing interest in the study of life
course trajectories to describe life trajectories, to classify individuals according
to them by using the Sequence Analysis (SA) method [9, 10, 11, 12]. SA is
based on data mining approaches, namely on the measures of dissimilarity or
distance between individual trajectories. It is entirely non-parametric.
The majority of papers devoted to SA highlights both certain socio-
demographic phenomena and the methodological development of the method.
There are some papers about the deinstitutionalization of the life course [13],
starting events are postponed [14, 15, 16], women are more proactive in social
life and they are postponing maternity [17], and the number of social roles are
growing for both sexes [18]. Matrimonial trajectories are becoming more
diverse and less predictable [19, 20, 21].
The development of methods goes in two directions: development with the
sources of mathematical statistics and Data Mining [22, 23, 24]. The
researchers not only discover typical sequences for different classes, but also
cluster them [25, 26], evaluate their resemblance [27], creat classifiers [28],
define the transaction costs [16], and build the decision trees [14].
The representation of life course trajectories in SA is similar to the code of
DNA molecules [9]. It focuses on a time window with chosen ages of start and
finish, inside of which studied events (e.g. entry to first and second
cohabitations (P1 and P2), marriages (M1 and M2), and birth of first and second
child (C1 and C2)) can occur. As was explained above, in our research, the first
point of the time window is 15 years (when the majority of Russians do not
have any matrimonial (i.e. single – S) or reproductive (i.e. childless – C0)
events) and the last point is 35 years. We deal with so-called ‘non-recurrent
sequences’, where an event may not repeat at all.
As individual life courses can be represented as a sequence of events, we are
able to code every event with a letter and build the “word” that describes the
state of an individual at every point of a chosen time window. Table 2 shows
all possible states of partnership and fertility trajectory.
Table 2. Alphabet of partnership and fertility states
Сode State Сode State
SC0 Single, no children M1C0 First marriage, no children
SC1 Single, 1 child M1C1 First marriage, 1 child
SC2 Single, 2 children M1C2 First marriage, 2 children
P1C0 First cohabitation, no children M2C0 Second marriage, no children
P1C1 First cohabitation, 1 child M2C1 Second marriage, 1 child
P1C2 First cohabitation, 2 children M2C2 Second marriage, 2 children
P2C0 Second cohabitation, no children
P2C1 Second cohabitation, 1 child
P2C2 Second cohabitation, 2 children
In our study, we used TraMineR (R-package) to mine and visualize
sequences of matrimonial and reproductive events [29]. The first tool we used
was chronograms. A chronogram is the representation of all the sequences of a
group at each age. It is a summary of individual trajectories. We used the graphs
representing the entropy – the measure of disorder of sequences – at each time
period. We calculated the mean time spent in statuses which, that is, how long
every member of each group, on average, was in each status. And finally, we
calculated the number of family formation events, which mean how many
events each member of each group experienced in his or her life.

5 Empirical Results

We ﬁrst show the results of the first group of tested hypotheses and then move
to the second group.
Gender. In order to prove that women take steps to family earlier than men,
we compared distributions of partnerships and fertility statuses, all sequences,
and entropy by gender.
On the horizontal axis of the plots, there are the ages of the respondents
between 15 and 35 years. The youngest respondents have not yet reached the
upper age limit: this is why we had to work with censored data (indicated in
gray). On the vertical axes of the first and third plots, the proportions of
individuals belonging to each state at a given age are shown. On the vertical
axis of the second plot there are respondents, so we can observe individual
family formation trajectories of men and women.
The plots reveal that either in GGS or in PFS, men start to experience family
formation events at the age of 17, while women do it earlier. In fact, 80% of
women have at least one event at 23, while among men this proportion is
reached at 26.
Men Women
GGS
PFS

Fig. 1. Family formation trajectories of Russians
One more evidence for our hypothesis is the mean time spent in singlehood
and without children (Figure 2). Men spend about 100 months after 15 years in
this status, while women spend only about 80 months.
86
Single, no children 113
81
99
14
Single, 1 child 5
8
4
4
Single, 2 children 1
1
1
5
First cohabitation, no children 6
12
12
4
First cohabitation, 1 child 4
5
3
2
First cohabitation, 2 children 2
2
1
0
Second cohabitation, no children 1
5
7
1
Second cohabitation, 1 child 0
3
1
1
Second cohabitation, 2 children 0
1
0
17
First marriage, no children 17
13
11
57
First marriage, 1 child 52
31
24
48
First marriage, 2 children 37
10
6
0
Second marriage, no children 0
0
0
2
Second marriage, 1 child 2
1
1
4
Second marriage, 2 children 2
1
0

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Mean duration of being in status, months
GGS: women GGS: men PFS: women PFS: men

Fig. 2. Mean time spent in status

In order to prove that women stay alone with children more often than men
do, we should look at Figures 1 and 2. The distribution of partnerships and
fertility statuses plot demonstrates that the proportion of single women with
children at the age of 35 (25%) is more than twice the proportion of such men
(10%). Mean time spent in these two statuses is higher for women (about 14
months) than for men (about 5 months) as well.
In order to prove that women experience more family formation events than
men, we compare mean, median, and mode number of family formation events
for men and women. The mean demonstrates that women have significantly
more events than men but, according to two other figures, the numbers are the
same.
6 5
3,81 4 4 4,04* 4 4 3,70 4 4,12* 4
4
2 Mean
2 Median
0 Mode
Men Women Men Women
GGS PFS
*The difference is statistically significant (p<0,001)

Fig. 3. Number of family formation events by gender

Generations. In order to prove that the de-standardization of family
formation trajectories was demonstrated first by representatives of first
“Modern” generation (1970-79 birth cohort) we compared the entropy of
different generations (Figure 4) and the distribution of partnerships and fertility
statuses by gender and generation (Appendix 1).
Men Women
GGS
PFS

Legend
1930-1939 1970-1979
1940-1949 1980-1986(89)
1950-1959 1990-1995
1960-1969
Fig. 4. Entropy by generations
It is apparent from the Figure in Appendix 1 that the proportion of married
people with at least one child decreased while the proportions of cohabited
(blue pallet) and single people with children (yellow pallet) have increased
dramatically. The visible changes started with the generations born after 1970.
In order to prove that “Modern” generations experience more varied
matrimonial and reproductive events than the representatives of “Soviet”
generations, we counted mean, median, and mode number of family formation
events for different generations (Table 3).
Table 3. Number of family formation events by generation and gender
Men Women
Mean Median Mode Mean Median Mode
GGS
1930-1939 3.70 4 4 3.68 4 4
1940-1949 3.82 4 4 3.84 4 4
1950-1959 3.81 4 4 4.07 4 4
1960-1969 3.89 4 4 4.07 4 4
1970-1979 4.10 4 4 4.54 4 4
1980-1986 3.15 3 2 3.95 4 4
PFS
1970-1979 4.12 4 4 4.42 4 4
1980-1989 3.94 4 2 4.44 5 5
1990-1995 2.51 2 2 2.79 2 2
The figures demonstrate that the number of events for men and women in
generations do not differ.

6 Conclusions

In this paper we revealed several points about family formation trajectories of
Russians:
─ women start to entry into first matrimonial events earlier than men;
─ women stay alone with children more often than men do;
─ women and men experience equal number of family formation events;
─ generations born after 1970 started to exhibit de-standardized family
formation trajectories;
─ the number of events for men and women in different generations remains
stable.
Matrimonial and reproductive behavior is becoming diverse, proving that
Russia fully displays Second Demographic Transition.
Acknowledgements. The article was prepared within the framework of the Academic
Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE)
in 2016 (grant № 16-05-0011 “Development and testing of demographic sequence
analysis and mining techniques”) and supported within the framework of a subsidy
granted to the HSE by the Government of the Russian Federation for the
implementation of the Global Competitiveness Program. The authors also want to thank
Thomas H. Espy for inestimable help in the preparation of this paper.
Appendix 1. Distribution of partnerships and fertility statuses
by gender and generation
“Soviet” generations “Modern” generations

GGS: 1970-79
GGS: 1930-39

PFS: 1970-79
GGS: 1940-49

GGS: 1980-86
GGS: 1950-59

PFS: 1980-89
GGS: 1960-69
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