LabFam

We’re proud to introduce one of our keynote speakers for the final conference of the ERC project LABFER: Elena Stancanelli 🎤

How do labour markets shape the most intimate decisions in our lives—whether to form a family, have children, or how to share care? 👶🏽💼 This question sits at the heart of Elena Stancanelli’s research.

An economist affiliated with the Paris School of Economics and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Stancanelli is internationally recognised for her work on labour economics, family economics, and the economics of ageing 📊. She is in the Top 5% Women in Economics in REPEC. Her research has shed light on how taxation, labour market institutions, and public policies influence household behaviour—particularly the division of paid and unpaid work within families.

Using rigorous empirical methods and innovative data, she has contributed important evidence on how policy design can either reinforce or reduce gender inequalities in both the labour market and the home ⚖️. Her work speaks directly to some of today’s most pressing challenges: balancing work and care, supporting fertility in low-birth-rate societies, and designing labour market institutions that work for families.

At Labour Market Transformations and the Future of Families (25–26 September 2026, Warsaw) 📍, she will bring this perspective to a broader discussion on how structural changes in work—driven by technology, globalisation, and shifting employment relations—interact with family life 🌍.

📣 Call for Papers is now open (deadline: 14 June 2026) 🗓️

Join us in Warsaw in September to be part of this timely conversation!

Ever wondered whether “having it all” still comes with a hidden hiring penalty? 👀

Join us for an upcoming seminar where Marta Palczyńska shares fresh, cross-national evidence on how organisational contexts shape care-based discrimination in hiring.

📅 May 21

⏳ ~1–1.5 hours

🕒 Start: 1PM

📍 Onsite Wydział Nauk Ekonomicznych UW Room A409

What’s on the table?

Drawing on a factorial survey experiment across Germany, Norway, and Poland, this research uncovers how candidate traits like gender, parenthood, and partnership status influence hiring decisions—and, crucially, how workplace policies can mitigate (or reinforce) these biases.

Spoiler alert:

Parenthood still matters—especially for (single) mothers

Diversity policies and flexible work can make a real difference

“Greedy jobs” remain… well, greedy

If you’re interested in labour markets, inequality, or the real-world impact of organisational policies, this is one you won’t want to miss.

Join us for what promises to be a lively and thought-provoking discussion!

🚨 Call for Papers | International Conference 🚨

Labour Market Transformations and the Future of Families
📅 25–26 September 2026
📍 University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Warsaw

✨ After years of exciting research, collaboration, and discovery, our wonderful ERC-funded project LABFER is coming to an end—and we would love to celebrate this final chapter with you.

As the world of work continues to transform at an unprecedented pace, the ways we form families, have children, and balance care and careers are evolving just as rapidly. This conference is an invitation to reflect, connect, and push this conversation forward together.

Join us for the final conference of the LABFER project (Horizon 2020, Grant No. 866207) and be part of a vibrant, interdisciplinary exchange bringing together scholars from demography, sociology, economics, and beyond.

🎤 Keynote Speakers

Elena Stancanelli (Paris School of Economics)
Yue Qian (University of British Columbia)

📢 We warmly invite submissions on topics including:
✔ Labour market transformations and family dynamics
✔ Fertility, family formation, and changing employment conditions
✔ Gender inequalities, care, and careers
✔ Health, well-being, and child outcomes
✔ Impacts of digitalisation, globalisation, and economic and societal shocks

📝 Submission details:

Abstract (max. 1 page) or full paper
📅 Deadline: 14 June 2026
Notifications: End of June 2026

🌍 Let’s come together in Warsaw to share ideas, showcase research, and mark the conclusion of a project that has brought so much insight into the links between labour markets and family life.

👉 Submit your work and be part of this special moment!
https://labfer.uw.edu.pl/labour-market-transformations-and-the-future-of-families-final-conference-of-the-erc-project-labfer/
This is a photo of (most of) our wonderful LabFam team at - we cannot wait to meet you in Warsaw!

🌷

At LabFam, we look at fertility from every angle—demographics, economics, social norms, policy… and yes, occasionally, the magic of a long spring weekend.

While many are busy hunting for chocolate eggs, we can’t help but notice the many modalities of fertility in action:

📊 demographic – timing and number of births

💼 economic – jobs, stability, and opportunity

🏡 social – partnerships, family life, and shared moments

🌱 seasonal – because there’s something about spring that sparks new beginnings

Here’s to a weekend that celebrates life in all its forms: family, friends, and maybe even a little introspection. May it bring warmth, joy, and the kind of slow moments that help balance work, family, and everything in between.

Happy Easter from LabFam! 🐣

📢 New publication team -this time within project

We’re proud to share latest paper published in Population and Development Review:

“Beyond Usual Suspects: Revisiting Barriers to Childbearing Decisions in a Low Fertility Setting.” by An Ku Anna Matysiak Magdalena Grabowska

🔎 At a time when fertility rates across developed countries have fallen to historic lows, public debates often focus on the “usual suspects” — jobs, housing, childcare. But are we missing part of the picture?

Using a factorial survey experiment (N = 1,337) among young adults (20–35) in Poland — a country emblematic of Europe’s fertility decline — we examine how multiple macro-level constraints shape intentions to have a first or second child.

💡 What did we find?

✔️ Economic security still matters — stable employment and access to housing remain fundamental across gender and parenthood status.

✔️ Reproductive autonomy is central — access to abortion rights emerges as the single most influential factor for childless women, and a significant one for mothers and partnered men.

✔️ Gender equality counts — access to childcare and men’s involvement in domestic work positively shape women’s intentions, but matter far less for men.

✔️ Climate concerns, while present in public discourse, appear comparatively less decisive.

✔️ Overall, men’s fertility intentions are less responsive to contextual changes.

📌 The key takeaway?

Policies that focus narrowly on financial incentives while neglecting reproductive rights and gender equality are unlikely to reverse fertility decline. Institutions and gender norms jointly shape reproductive decision-making — and both must be part of the conversation.

Congratulations to the entire LabFam team!

🔗 Read the full paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.70046

🎄 Time for ... Season’s Greetings from LabFam ✨

As the year comes to a close, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to our community of researchers, collaborators, and colleagues. Your curiosity, engagement, and commitment to open and rigorous science inspire us every day.

The holiday season can be joyful, but it can also be a challenging time for many — for those experiencing loss, those without family, or those facing circumstances beyond their control. Some may choose not to celebrate, and however you spend this season, we hope you find moments of comfort, connection, and reflection.

We are deeply grateful for the shared pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and we look forward to another year of meaningful discoveries, collaboration, and insight into the lives and families we study.

Wishing you peace, reflection, and gentle joy this season,

The Team 🎁📊

🎄 New Research Alert | Mental Health, Social Media & Crisis Contexts

As we enter the Christmas season—a time often associated with joy, connection, and celebration—many mental health struggles remain hidden behind curated smiles and festive posts. Social media feeds filled with “perfect” moments can quietly intensify stress, loneliness, and comparison, even as they promise connection.

This reality makes our latest published review especially timely.

📘 What did social media really do to mental health during COVID-19?

Rather than focusing on the pandemic itself, this paper examines how social media platforms shaped psychological wellbeing during the crisis.

🔍 Based on empirical research from 2020–2024 across four major databases, the study Psychological Well-Being and Social Media During the Pandemic: Evidence, Research Gaps, and Future Research Directions

by Jolanta Kowal Jaroslaw Klebaniuk Karolina Olejnik and Paweł Weichbroth provides a systematic synthesis of evidence—addressing long-standing contradictions in the literature.

Key findings reveal a dual impact:

⚠️ Negative outcomes linked to social media use

Stress

Anxiety

Depression

Loneliness

Violence

Eating disorders

🌱 Positive outcomes also emerged

Engagement

Fellowship

Social support

Assurance

Advice

Creativity

The findings underline a crucial message: in times of crisis—and especially during emotionally charged periods like the holidays—social media can fuel psychological distress, but it can also offer connection, support, and resilience.

📌 The paper further highlights:

Gaps in current research

The role of teletherapy and digital mental health support

Policy and economic strategies to mitigate digital psychological risks and misinformation

💡 As festive imagery fills our feeds this season, this research reminds us to look beyond appearances and consider how digital environments shape mental health—often in unseen ways.

🔗 Explore the full paper and join the conversation on creating healthier digital spaces. https://reference-global.com/article/10.2478/ceej-2025-0023

🎄 A Christmas gift for the life-course research community 🎁🎙️

This festive season, we are delighted to share a podcast episode introducing LabFam Individual Biographies (LIB) — an open science research infrastructure designed to make comparative life-course research easier, richer, and fully reproducible.

🔍 What is LIB?

LIB transforms longitudinal panel data into harmonized, spell-based life-course histories, moving beyond point-in-time interviews to continuous trajectories with clear start and end dates. It covers three core domains:

👶 Fertility histories

💍 Partnership histories

💼 Employment histories

This structure makes LIB especially powerful for event-history analysis, timing and sequencing of life events, and studying interactions between family dynamics and labor market careers.

🌍 What does LIB offer researchers?

Comparable life-course data across countries

Lower entry barriers to complex longitudinal analyses

Fully open-source R code for transparency and reproducibility

Flexible configuration: countries, domains, time windows, output formats

Integration with the Comparative Panel File (CPF) for enriched analyses

📊 Data coverage

LIB currently harmonizes data from five major panel studies:

Germany (SOEP), Switzerland (SHP), UK (BHPS/UKHLS), USA (PSID), and Australia (HILDA), spanning life courses from the late 1960s to the early 2020s.

📌 Important: LIB does not redistribute microdata. Researchers access the original surveys through official providers, while LIB supplies the code to construct harmonized biographies.

🎧 In the podcast, we talk about the idea behind LIB, its scientific potential, and practical use, as well as the journey from concept to a fully implemented and validated infrastructure. https://youtu.be/XA0qn3gC3lc

👥 LIB team:

Ewa Weychert · Beata Osiewalska. · Lucas van der Velde · Anna Matysiak. As the year comes to an end, we hope LIB will serve as a meaningful gift to the research community — supporting collaboration, openness, and new insights into how lives unfold over time.

✨ Happy holidays and happy researching!

🎄📊

LabFam Individual Biographies: open science project that harmonizes family and employment histories LabFam Individual Biographies (LIB) is an open science research infrastructure that provides harmonized, spell-based family and employment life-course histor...

Congratulations Anna Matysiak !

🌟 We are thrilled to share great news! 🌟

Our article “Two sides of a coin: The relationship between work autonomy and childbearing”, authored by Beata Osiewalska and Anna Matysiak, published in Journal of Marriage and Family (87(3), pp. 1178–1199), has been awarded the main prize in the 1st Edition of the Award Competition of the Committee on Demographic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences (KND PAN) for an outstanding scientific achievement in population studies.

🔗 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.13066

🔗 KND PAN: https://knd.pan.pl/

The competition attracted significant interest, with high-quality submissions . The Award Committee highlighted the originality of our contribution, its importance for research on demographic processes, and its relevance for understanding how working conditions relate to family decisions.

We are deeply honored that our work was selected as the top scientific article in this year’s competition.

A big thank you to the Award Committee and the Committee on Demographic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences for this recognition — and to everyone involved in supporting this research.

✨ We are excited to continue exploring the intersection of labour market conditions, autonomy, well-being, and family behaviour.

Listen to our podcast presenting this awarded paper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se1RM_wfbWE

Two sides of a coin: The relationship between work autonomy and childbearing In this episode of the LabFam podcast, we dive into the fascinating world of family planning and explore a crucial—but often overlooked—factor: a mother’s fr...

📊 Jak rynek pracy wpływa na decyzje o posiadaniu dzieci?
➡️ Badania prof. Anny Matysiak z Uniwersytet Warszawski, laureatki Nagrody Fundacji na rzecz Nauki Polskiej 2025 w obszarze nauk humanistycznych i społecznych, pokazują, że stabilność zawodowa i bezpieczeństwo ekonomiczne, a także możliwości łączenia pracy zawodowej z opieką, mają kluczowe znaczenie dla decyzji o posiadaniu dzieci.

👪 Jej prace dowodzą, że kobiety nie rezygnują z macierzyństwa z powodu pracy, lecz odkładają tę decyzję do momentu, gdy mogą liczyć na pewność zatrudnienia.

Te badania mają istotne znaczenie dla kształtowania polityki społecznej: skuteczne wsparcie rodzin to nie tylko świadczenia, ale przede wszystkim stabilny i przyjazny rynek pracy.

🔗 Po więcej informacji o prof. Annie Matysiak i nagrodzonym osiągnięciu zapraszamy na naszą stronę.
🎙️ Posłuchajcie też rozmowy z badaczką, jaka ukazała się na antenie RMF FM.
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