bank crisis, The Long Demise of Credit Suisse

Little more than a week after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the banking crisis has officially made its way across the Atlantic. In a deal hastily brokered by regulators, Switzerland’s largest bank UBS agreed to buy its longtime rival Credit Suisse for about $3.2 billion on Sunday, after the latter had found itself under severe pressure last week.

The deal, priced a staggering 60 percent below Credit Suisse’s market capitalization at Friday’s market close, marks the end of the 166-year-old institution and cements UBS’s status as the largest Swiss bank and one of the largest financial institutions in Europe. While not directly linked to the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank, Credit Suisse ultimately fell victim to the acute loss of confidence in the banking system, which turned the bank’s latest annual report into a giant red flag for clients and investors.

In the report published last Tuesday, the Zurich-based banking group not only acknowledged “material weakness” in its financial reporting, but it also posted a $7.9 billion loss for 2022 and confirmed substantial outflows of deposits and other assets under management that “have exacerbated and may continue to exacerbate” liquidity risks. Against the backdrop of the U.S. banking crisis, it’s no surprise that clients and shareholders were equally spooked, sending the bank’s stock price tumbling. By the end of week, it was down another 25 percent after having plummeted almost 70 percent in 2022.

Having been involved in a series of scandals and catastrophic deals in recent years, Credit Suisse has been on a downward trajectory for a while, seeing its market capitalization drop from $45 billion in 2017 to $12 billion by the end of last year. The bank’s acquisition by UBS marks the end of that development and what UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher called “an emergency rescue”.

America’s high homicide rate

February 6, 2023 Joseph Chamie

America leads advanced developed countries in terms of guns per capita and homicide rates, although with substantial variation by state, gender, and major racial/ethnic groups. Given its policies on police, guns and homicides, Joseph Chamie opines, America’s homicide rate is unlikely to reach low levels any time soon.

Introduction

Among advanced developed countries, the United States has the highest homicide rate: 7.8 per 100,000 population in 2020. Most others, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom, have homicide rates that are a fraction of this level (Figure 1). For example, the U.S. firearm homicide rate in 2019 was 22 times greater than the rate of the European Union.

сравнивать имеет смысл с Швейцарией, или Израилем :(

U.S. homicide rates

The U.S. homicide rate of 7.8 per 100,000 in 2020 is the highest since 1995 and represents a record increase of approximately 30 percent with respect to 2019. Possible explanations for this rise include the consequences of the COVID pandemic and the worsening relations between police and communities following the murder of George Floyd (25 May 2020). Often heard political explanations for the rise, such as “some are soft on crime”, are not supported by the data. Homicide rates have increased in both Democratic and Republican states, in cities controlled by Republican and Democratic mayors, and in the suburbs and rural areas.

Of the 139 mass shootings that occurred in developed countries between 1998 to 2019, 73 percent occurred in the United States and resulted in 816 deaths. France had the next highest number of mass shootings with 8, resulting in 179 deaths, including the Bataclan terrorist attack of November 2015 (90 deaths). America’s 2020 homicide rate, however, remains markedly lower than the rates in the 1970s and 1980s. Forty years ago, for example, the U.S. rate exceeded 10 homicides per 100,000.

Homicide rates vary considerably across America’s 50 states. The highest are typically found in the south. For example, the three states with the highest rates in 2020 were Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama (21, 20 and 14 per 100,000 population, respectively). However, in 2020, Washington D.C. had an even higher homicide rate of approximately 25 murders per 100,000 residents.

In contrast, the lowest homicide rates are observed in northeastern states. The three states with the lowest rates are Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont (below 2 per 100,000).
Approximately 80 percent of U.S. homicides in 2020 involved firearms, most often handguns. In the 1960s, by contrast, handguns were used in approximately 50 percent of homicides.

In terms of gun ownership, America is by far the world leader, at 120 guns per 100 population, with about 40 percent of Americans owning firearms. This is well above the proportions of the next four highest countries, i.e., Yemen at 53, Serbia and Montenegro at 39 and Canada at 35.

Homicide differentials

A noteworthy feature of homicide rates across America is that the male rate (12.8 per 100,000 in 2020) is many times higher than the female rate (2.9 per 100,000). This translates into approximately 80 percent of homicide victims being males.

Homicides rates also vary markedly by age. They increase through the teenage years and peak in the early twenties. As in recent years, gun homicide in 2020 was the leading cause of death among the under-25s, and people under age 30 were nearly 10 times more likely to die from a firearm than from COVID-19.

In addition to significant differences by age and sex, wide gaps in homicide rates exist among America’s five major racial/ethnic groups as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In 2020 the homicide rates for Black American males and females were the highest among the five groups, at 57 and 8 per 100,000, respectively. They were followed by Indian American males and females (24 and 6 per 100,000), Hispanic American males and females (11 and 2 per 100,000), and White American males and females (5 and 2 per 100,000). The lowest homicide rates were among Asian American males and females, at 3 and 1 per 100,000 (Figure 2).

Those differences in homicide rates produce a striking distribution in the numbers of homicide victims among the groups. Black males accounted for 49 percent of homicide victims in 2020, followed by White males at 29 percent, White females at 11 percent, and Black females at 8 percent (Figure 3).

In 2018 homicide was the fifth leading cause of death among Black males, and the ninth leading cause among Hispanic and American Indian males.

Addressing homicide rates

Over the years, various proposals and strategies have been recommended to address America’s high rate of homicides. Many emphasize the need for social and economic investments, long-term strategies and anti-crime measures focusing on education, jobs, housing, inequality, racism, outreach programs, drug treatment and gun control.

 
Those investments require economic and social resources as well as political backing and it typically takes time for results to become visible. Faced with the rising number of homicides, and the high homicide rate, relatively few people are prepared to wait.

A growing share of Americans − now at nearly half − want more spending on police in their neighborhoods to address violent crime. But increased police funding has also become a partisan issue. While 61 percent of Republicans believe spending on police should be increased, only about one-third of Democrats share that view.

Given the current state of affairs in the country with respect to police, guns and homicides, America’s high homicide rate is unlikely to decline any time soon to the low levels enjoyed by other advanced developed countries.

 

References

• Ax, Joseph (2022) “Analysis: Crime is a top concern for many Americans in midterm vote. How bad is it?”. Reuters, 1 November.
• BBC News (2022) “Mass shootings: America’s challenge for gun control explained in seven charts”. 12 October.
• Beckett, Lois and Abene Clayton (2022) “An unspoken epidemic’: Homicide rate increase for Black women rivals that of Black men”. The Guardian, 25 June.
• Claudio, Andre (2021) “States With the Highest Homicide Rates”. Route Fifty, 30 November.
• Cooper, Alexia and Erica L. Smith (2011) “Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008”. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November.
• Council on Criminal Justice (2022) “Saving Lives: Ten Essential Actions Cities Can Take to Reduce Violence Now”. 12 January.
• Eurostat (2022) “Crime Statistics”. Eurostat Statistics Explained. Luxembourg.
• Murez, Cara (2022) “Gun Homicides Rose Sharply During Pandemic, Black Men Most Affected”. US News, 15 December.
• Parker, Kim and Kiley Hurst (2021) “Growing share of Americans say they want more spending on police in their area”. Pew Research Center, 26 October.
• Silva, Jason R. (2022) “Global mass shootings: comparing the United States against developed and developing countries”. International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, 21 March.
• U.S. Center for Disease Control (2022) “Leading Causes of Death – Males and Females – United States, 2018”. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 March.
• U.S. Center for Disease Control (2021) “New CDC/NCHS Data Confirm Largest One-Year Increase in U.S. Homicide Rate in 2020”. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 October.

Does educational mismatch affect labour emigration from Switzerland?

Philippe Wanner, Marco Pecoraro and Massimiliano Tani

The relationship between educational mismatch in the labour market and emigration decisions is a complex one. In Switzerland, undereducation increases emigration by UE27/EFTA migrants. In contrast, Philippe Wanner, Marco Pecoraro and Massimiliano Tani find that overeducation among non-European workers is associated with a low level of emigration.

In today’s labour market, there are increasing differences between the actual skills of the workforce and the requirements of the economy, as the tasks associated with each occupation change rapidly. Consequently, a mismatch between workers’ skills and their current job is not uncommon. Such a situation, which can be briefly termed “educational mismatch”, is associated with reduced levels of satisfaction at work and higher job mobility (e.g., Grunau and Pecoraro 2017). For migrant workers, a poor match in the host countries’ labour market may induce remigration, although the causal link is generally difficult to assess.

The Swiss case

Switzerland may be an exception, though. The Swiss labour market is particularly interesting, as migrants represent one-third of its workforce, including both skilled and unskilled individuals, and earn wages that are among the highest in the world. Migration to Switzerland is governed by two coexisting regimes. For EU/EFTA citizens, the free movement of persons regime gives access to the European labour market, of which Switzerland is part. For non-EU/EFTA nationals, the main reason for staying in Switzerland is family reunification or asylum. For this group, however, mobility is restricted on the European territory. These two groups require a separate analysis, as migration opportunities are very different.

In a recent paper, we analysed the effect of educational mismatch on labour emigration in Switzerland (Wanner et al., 2021): below we report our main results. For our analysis, we used novel individual-level administrative and survey data that were linked together, enabling us to distinguish the strategies of different groups of migrants and also to consider return migration (to the country of origin) and outward migration (to another country) separately over a 12-month period.

Different levels of educational mismatch according to origin

Educational mismatch can be identified by comparing the estimated years of schooling of workers (based on their achieved education) with the modal years of education observed for that specific occupation (Visintin et al. 2015). This comparison leads to three possible situations:

• no mismatch, if the number of years of education corresponds to the modal value calculated for salaried workers in the same occupation;

• overeducation, for workers with more school years than the mode;

• undereducation in the opposite case: the person is employed in a job where most other people with the same occupation are better educated.

Based on this approach, we find that 23% of natives are undereducated, a proportion that reaches 37% among foreign-born individuals. However, there are significant differences between different groups of migrants, with a high of 42% among those from non-EU27/EFTA countries holding a long-term residence permit and a low of 27% among those from EU27/EFTA countries holding an annual residence permit.

Conversely, 20% of Swiss-born individuals and between 22% and 31% of foreign-born individuals are overeducated, depending on their region of origin and type of permit (Figure 1). In total, 56% of natives have no educational mismatch, and this proportion varies between 35% and 42% among different groups of foreign-born populations.
This measure of mismatch is then used to predict the emigration behaviour of both migrants and natives. In particular, we test whether a failure of labour market integration, which here takes the form of overeducation, may lead to an increase in emigration compared to the case of no educational mismatch and whether this is the case for all groups of migrants living in Switzerland. We also measure whether undereducation leads to workers leaving Switzerland under the hypothesis that these workers are the most adaptable and are more likely to find a job in the global – international – labour market.

The impact of educational mismatch on emigration

A model measuring the impact of the number of years of over- or undereducation shows the following results (holding several covariates constant): compared to the median requirements of the profession, being undereducated significantly increases the probability of emigration among both native- and foreign-born workers, except for those from non-EU27/EFTA countries with permanent permits (Figure 2). The most likely explanation of this result is that undereducated workers have special skills that make them perform well in the labour market, not only in Switzerland. These capabilities make them more likely to find an occupation abroad, compared to the reference category (workers who are not undereducated).
Overeducated workers are no more mobile than those with no educational mismatch. In contrast, international mobility is hampered for those coming from non-EU27/EFTA countries with annual permits. Migrants arriving from these countries, mainly from the Balkans, have little incentive to return home, where the labour market is less attractive (and where the political situation may be difficult), and, due to legal constraints, have few opportunities to continue their migratory journey to other European countries.

The Swiss labour market is relatively open and is thus influenced by surrounding countries. This openness mainly attracts low-educated and highly qualified workers or those who have been successful in their occupations. In terms of economic policy implications, our results suggest that Swiss authorities need to envisage new strategies to retain the most successful workers in the Swiss labour market.

References

• Grunau, P., & Pecoraro, M. (2017). Educational mismatch and promotions to managerial positions: a test of the career mobility theory. Applied Economics, 49(12), 1226-1240.
• Visintin, S., Tijdens, K., & van Klaveren, M. (2015). Skill mismatch among migrant workers: evidence from a large multi-country dataset, IZA Journal of Migration, 4(1), 1-34, .
• Wanner, P., Pecoraro, M., & Tani, M. (2021). Does educational mismatch affect emigration behaviour?. European Journal of Population 37, 959–995. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-021-09595-z.

Swiss, elderly, single, and childless. Happy?

September 16, 2021 by Malgorzata Mikucka

Around the world, more and more people age without close kin. Contrary to expectations, however, according to Małgorzata Mikucka, this does not reduce their life satisfaction, or at least not systematically and not in Switzerland.

Contemporary adults are at increasing risk of ageing without close living kin (Verdery et al, 2019). Past studies showed that old-age singlehood and childlessness are typically associated with lower life satisfaction and greater material disadvantage (Dykstra 2009). However, the question remains about what happens as age progresses.

In a recent paper, I tried to understand the nexus between family situation and life satisfaction among a sample of older Swiss, using data from the Swiss Household Panel, SHP (Mikucka, 2020). The panel started in 1999, and when I conducted my analysis, data were available up to 2017. I tested whether unmarried and childless respondents were less satisfied with their lives than married people and parents, and how these differences evolved with age.

The Swiss way to life satisfaction

In the cohort aged 60–64 years at first observation (any year between 1999 and 2007), married people were indeed more satisfied with their lives than those who were never-married, divorced, or widowed (Fig. 1). However, the differences in the older cohort (75–79 years old) were not statistically significant, except for divorced fathers who were less satisfied than married fathers. The result for the younger cohort is consistent with previous literature which documented the greater life satisfaction of married than unmarried people (Bures et al. 2009). Conversely, childlessness did not systematically correlate with life satisfaction. This lack of difference is at odds with some past studies (Albertini and Arpino 2018), but it may be explained by the cross-country variation of the consequences of childlessness.
To understand whether the differences related to family situation intensified or declined with age, I analysed within-individual changes in life satisfaction over the period 1999-2017 (Figure 2). Life satisfaction among married parents (the reference category in the analysis) declined slightly with age. This baseline rate of decline did not differ systematically with gender or education, but it was shaped by life course transitions. This suggests that, at least in Switzerland, life satisfaction trajectories are shaped by the events that people experience, rather than by their underlying characteristics.

Do inequalities cumulate as people get older?

Theoretically, two opposite mechanisms may shape the consequences of kinlessness as people progress into advanced old age. The first is the mechanism of cumulative (dis)advantage. It postulates that, due to longer exposure to (dis)advantageous conditions, the differences among groups intensify with age (Dannefer 2003). In my analysis, the group experiencing the most “advantageous conditions” were married parents, judging from their high initial life satisfaction at the age of 60–64 years. The group with lowest life satisfaction at the same age were never-married mothers.

According to the cumulative (dis)advantage hypothesis, the life satisfaction trajectories of married parents should be more positive than those of the divorced, widowed, or never married. However, my results did not conform to this pattern (Figure 2). On the contrary, the life satisfaction of some subgroups of unmarried respondents (e.g. divorced and never-married mothers) increased at a faster rate than that of the married.

Partly consistent with the hypothesis of cumulative (dis)advantage was the pattern for never-married mothers (figure 2, third panel). This group’s life satisfaction, low at the start, declined more rapidly than in other groups, past age 75. However, the support for the hypothesis was only partial because the initial life satisfaction disadvantage was observed only in the younger cohort, whereas the faster rate of life satisfaction decline occurred only among the older cohort.

Ageing as an equalizing experience?

The alternative theoretical mechanism is called “age-as-leveller” (Dupre 2007): it postulates that as age advances, health becomes the most important, if not the only, predictor of life satisfaction, and as age-related health decline affects everybody, lower life satisfaction should characterize all groups.

Qualitative inspection of the predicted results of Figure 2 suggests that the life satisfaction gap between married and previously married people has been closing for both men and women, in both younger and older cohorts. However, only a few of these changes are statistically significant (Mikucka, 2020). Moreover, the gap closes in the younger cohort only, whereas the hypothesis predicts that the levelling mechanism should play a role primarily at advanced ages.

Conclusions

Neither the cumulative (dis)advantage hypothesis, nor age-as-leveller mechanism accurately describe the effect of family situations on life satisfaction when people become old. Instead, the buffering effect of parenthood seems more relevant.

Childlessness itself makes little systematic difference for life satisfaction and its dynamics in Switzerland in the observed years. However, elderly men who became widowers experienced a greater loss of life satisfaction if they were also childless (Figure 3). Additionally, life satisfaction of childless married and divorced respondents in the older cohort declined more rapidly than that of parents (Mikucka 2020). These results suggest that parenthood may have a protective buffering effect in certain cases, e.g. among men entering widowhood, but not in general.
Never-married mothers appear to be a particularly fragile group. Single parenthood is in itself a difficult experience (e.g., Meier et al. 2016), especially in a conservative social context, like that of Switzerland.

However, the main take-home message from this research is that growing instability of marriages and ageing without close kin do not pose a considerable threat for life satisfaction of elderly people in Switzerland, and probably also in other relatively wealthy countries offering welfare support. The (often implicit) assumption that lack of close family is particularly painful and detrimental for elderly persons did not find consistent support in my data.

References

• Albertini M., B. Arpino. 2018. Childlessness, parenthood and subjective wellbeing: The relevance of conceptualizing parenthood and childlessness as a continuum. Preprint. DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/xtfq6
• Bures R.M., T. Koropeckyj-Cox, M. Loree. 2009. Childlessness, parenthood, and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults. Journal of Family Issues 30(5): 670–687.
• Dannefer D. 2003. Cumulative advantage/disadvantage and the life course: Cross-fertilizing age and social science theory. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 58(6): S327–S337.
• Dupre M.E. 2007. Educational differences in age-related patterns of disease: Reconsidering the cumulative disadvantage and age-as-leveler hypotheses. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 48(1): 1–15.
• Dykstra P.A. 2009. Childless old age. In International Handbook of Population Aging, pages 671–690. Springer.
• Mikucka M. 2020. Old-Age Trajectories of Life Satisfaction. Do Singlehood and Childlessness Hurt More When People Get Older?. Swiss Journal of Sociology, 46(3), 397-424.
• Meier A., K. Musick, S. Flood, R. Dunifon. 2016. Mothering experiences: How single parenthood and employment structure the emotional valence of parenting. Demography 53(3): 649–674.
• Verdery A.M., R. Margolis, Z. Zhou, X. Chai, J. Rittirong, J. (2019). Kinlessness around the world. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 74(8), 1394-1405.

Abortion statistics of Switzerland

 

The abortion statistics provide a general overview on abortion in Switzerland. It enables monitoring of abortion trends and indicates measures to be taken as well as possible preventive measures.

Статистика Швейцарии зороша, но проводится опросом провайдеров, но ответ на опрос обязателен.

In Switzerland, fertility does not rhyme with happiness

Published on N-IUSSP.ORG November 11, 2019

En Suisse, fécondité ne rime pas avec bonheur

Malgorzata Mikucka

Parenthood typically improves people’s life satisfaction, even if only in the short run. Surprisingly, instead, Malgorzata Mikucka finds that a second birth has a negative, albeit temporary, effect on Swiss mothers’ life satisfaction. This may depend on the social pressure to have children, coupled with policies that do not support parenthood.

In a recent paper (Mikucka and Rizzi, 2019) we analyse how parenthood affects life satisfaction in Switzerland. We use data of the Swiss Household Panel for the years 2000-2016: this is a longitudinal study that records, among others, individual trajectories of life satisfaction. We analyse the life satisfaction of parents, i.e. people who were observed in the waves directly preceding or following a birth, and whose (first or second) child was aged 15 or younger. Although we were theoretically able to follow respondents for up to a maximum of 17 consecutive years, no respondent was observed over the whole period (see also note to Figure 1).

Two interesting patterns emerge. First, surprising as it may seem, fertility does not necessarily improve life satisfaction. In fact, it may even reduce it, albeit temporarily. Second, the decline in life satisfaction during parenthood seems specific to Switzerland and may be driven by the poor state support for families with children. Indeed, work-family conflict and economic costs of parenthood appear to play a prominent role on this outcome.

The parenthood paradox (when you take decisions that make you less happy)

We know from past studies that parents’ (and especially mothers’) life satisfaction increases, albeit only temporarily, in the year preceding and following the birth of the first child (e.g. Myrskylä and Margolis, 2014). This is true also in Switzerland (2000 to 2016), according to our data, but not for the second child: when they are between 1 and 4 years old, the life satisfaction of their mothers declines to below the pre-birth level (Figure 1).

This pattern is unexpected for three reasons. First, similar analyses for other countries (e.g., Myrskylä and Margolis, 2014, for Germany and the UK) consistently show that parenthood improves life satisfaction, even if only temporarily. This suggests that the worsening of life satisfaction following parenthood may be specific to Switzerland.

Second, fertility control in Switzerland is virtually perfect, and couples are free to decide whether and when to have children. Childlessness in Switzerland is among the highest in the world (e.g., above 20% among women born in 1960) and it is socially accepted (Burkimsher and Zeman, 2017). Not surprisingly, people predominantly plan their parenthood: in our sample, for instance, 67% of first children and 81% of second children were planned. Thus, mothers consciously choose to have the child(ren) who will later reduce their life satisfaction.

The third reason why our result is surprising is that two-child families are the dominant family type in Switzerland, which suggests that a majority of families choose a path that, at least in the relatively short run, diminishes their life satisfaction.

Between-group differences do not help to solve the puzzle. For instance, we expected that people with a stronger `taste for children’ would have a second child sooner after the first one and also that they would derive more satisfaction from parenthood. Our results show the opposite. Women who had their second child shortly (one or two years) after the first one had experienced more negative trajectories of life satisfaction with the first child than women who waited longer before having a second child (Figure 2).

While it seems rational to expect that people who want a certain thing (a child, in this case) should be happier once they get it, our analysis suggested that this does not apply to having children in Switzerland. What are the possible explanations? One is that people are incapable of predicting how their fertility decisions will affect their life satisfaction and end up choosing what makes them unhappy. Another possibility is that, when taking important decisions in their lives, people account not only for their expected life satisfaction, but also for some other factors, among which social norms and values (e.g., children should have at least one sibling). In other words, people may willingly make choices that will make their lives harder. Besides, parenthood may be a source of meaning and psychological reward, but it may also conflict with other life goals, such as career or leisure. This brings us to the second interesting pattern in our results, namely the consequences of Swiss policies for parenthood.

When policies do not help: work-family conflict and the economic cost of parenthood

Switzerland is an interesting case for the study of parenthood and life satisfaction, because, despite its high standard of living, state support for families with children is low. Childcare in Switzerland is expensive, maternity leave is short, and parental leave does not exist at all (OECD, 2015). In families with small children to be cared for, the mothers predominantly resort to part-time employment. Expensive childcare and the reduced earning capability of mothers likely produce two types of outcomes: work-family conflict and economic pressures.

Our results indeed show that work-family conflict shapes the life satisfaction of mothers in Switzerland. The care-intensive stage of parenthood with the second child is especially challenging, and this is when mothers’ life satisfaction falls below its pre-birth level. Moreover, during the same care-intensive stage with a first child, life satisfaction among higher educated mothers declines more than among lower educated mothers (Figure 3), suggesting that combining parenthood with a career is particularly problematic. No similar pattern shows up for men, who seem to be less affected by time pressures and juggling work and family responsibilities.

Economic pressure should not be downplayed. The trajectories of life satisfaction among mothers of school-age children depend on their incomes: mothers with higher (above-median) household incomes experience more positive changes of life satisfaction than mothers with lower (below-median) household incomes (Figure 4). No similar pattern shows up for men.


Overall, our results suggest that the low state support for families that characterizes the Swiss context worsens the experience of parenthood, especially for mothers. Public opinion seems to be aware of this: in a recent study, about half of the respondents stated that paid leave should be longer than the current four months, and about 80% agreed that part of the leave should be reserved for the father (Valarino et al. 2017). In the light of our analysis, such changes might plausibly improve the day-to-day experience of parenthood.

References:

• Burkimsher, M., & Zeman, K. (2017). Childlessness in Switzerland and Austria. In M. Kreyenfeld & D. Konietzka (Eds.), Childlessness in Europe: Contexts, causes, and consequences, demographic research monographs (A series of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research). Cham: Springer.
• Mikucka, M., & Rizzi, E. (2019). The Parenthood and Happiness Link: Testing Predictions from Five Theories. European Journal of Population, 1-25.
• Myrskylä, M., & Margolis, R. (2014). Happiness: Before and after the kids. Demography, 51(5), 1843–1866.
• OECD. (2015). Family database. Paris: Electronic Database.[если кто видел/пользовал — свистните, пож]
• Valarino, I., Duvander, A.-Z., Haas, L., & Neyer, G. (2017). Exploring leave policy preferences: A comparison of Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 25(1), 118–147.

Святость материнства: ад нака

soccer migration, case of Switzerland

Швейцарская сборная образца 2016 года является самой многонациональной из всех 24 команд, принимающих участие в турнире. Из 23 футболистов команды и тренерского состава только девять человек не имеют миграционного прошлого.
про дробности

Memo of the Known Soldier

любопытно, что флаги у них антиподы

швейцарцы сварили сайт с картотекой пленных первой мировой войны (и не только),

статья про сабж тут, ссылка на сам ресурс ниже:

К столетию с начала Первой мировой войны архив Международного агентства по делам военнопленных был оцифрован. С 4 августа на специально созданной интернет-платформе любой желающий сможет получить доступ к электронным версиям тысяч учетных карточек интернированных лиц и военнопленных. Эти документы включены сегодня в список Всемирного наследия ЮНЕСКО.