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Research about parent effects on family behavior traditionally examines intergenerational transmission: whether children adopt the same family behavior as their parents. In this project, we draw attention to empirical regularities where children follow contrasting family formation trajectories to their parents. Such regularities are stable parent effects on family behavior, even though there is no direct intergenerational transmission. We use data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG) and propose an innovative application of multichannel sequence analysis and cluster analysis to investigate family formation trajectories between age 15 and age 40 holistically. Results show patterns of both ‘similar’ and ‘contrasting’ parent - child family formation dyads.

Sibling studies have been applied to estimate the effect of family background - everything siblings share - on socioeconomic and demographic outcomes. Recent research on family formation emphasizes that fertility and partnership transitions are embedded in a holistic process of family formation that unfolds over time. The main analytical purpose of this study is to combine the sibling approach with sequence analysis to disentangle the mechanisms that link family background to family formation trajectories. We use Finnish register data from 1987 until 2007 to construct family formation sequences for sibling and non-sibling dyads from age 18 to 30. The empirical analysis employs sequence analysis, sibling correlations, and regression analysis.

Sequence analysis has seen recent advances as well as wider applications in the social sciences.  However, no formal way exists in the literature for comparing groups of sequences to determine whether they are different in a statistically meaningful way.  To fill this gap, in this project we propose a permutation test for comparing groups of social science sequences.  We view a typical social science sequence, such as life-courses as having certain characteristics such as transition to first marriage, first birth, or first job, that contribute some unique information.