Purpose of the project

The overall aim of the project was to analyse to what extent the socio-economic composition and the geographical distribution in family network influence individual's lifestyle and
health. Another specific aim was to examine how the socioeconomic composition and geographical distribution of family networks have changed over time in order to better understand the functionality of family networks.

By use of register data, we have analysed how life style was associated with the socio-economic composition in the family networks and, moreover, how the income distribution in family networks have changed over time and how this has been related to the geographical distribution of family networks members. In order to broaden the perspective from the specific Swedish context we have also analysed the functionality of social network and the impact on well-being in Sweden in comparison to other European countries using cross-national survey data. And since we found that having a family network was essential for health outcome, we further scrutinized the impact on mortality of living alone.

During the research process we have become increasingly aware of the importance to consider gender and regional perspectives in the analysis of how the socio-economic patterns within families have changed and how the socio-economic composition of family networks influences life style and health outcomes.

The three most important results from the project

1. Empirical results from the projects provide support for the hypothesis that life style is influenced by the socio-economic composition in family networks. Our empirical analyses show that smoking is associated with education level in the family network (1). We have found similar association also for other life style related habits (e.g. physical activities) (5). Further, we found and association between own life style and that in the family network. The results from the project indicate that more heterogeneous family networks could result in more healthy life styles among low-income earners. Hence, a possible outcome of decreasing social mobility could be less healthy life styles among low income-earners.

2. The empirical analyses of how the socio-economic composition of the family networks has changed over time, provided no straight forward answers (2). For women, low-income earners and when analyzing only the geographical proximate networks, we find that the networks have become more homogeneous over time i.e. the rich are more likely to have rich family members and vice versa. But for men in high and middle income strata we do not find this pattern. Moreover, we found important differences by regions types, where men in high and middle income strata are more mobile in the major urban regions as compared to other types of regions (6). This reveals the importance of study the processes across gender, region and income strata, which is rarely done in previous research.

3. We also found that living arrangement was important for health outcome and that living alone was associated with higher mortality (3). We also found that loneliness was regarded as a large problem from many Swedes above age 50 and that Swedes on average had less contacts with members of their social network compared to other European countries. But on the other hand that they were more satisfied with their networks (4).

New research issues generated

Due to the availability of a very rich data-set, it has been possible for us to analyse patterns socio-economic change within family networks on a national level and also to analyse the associations between life style and socio-economic composition in family networks using a large regional data set. This provides very comprehensive picture of the major trends and associations, but our research also reveals how the patterns vary across gender, regions and socio-economic groups. This is a major finding, but also a point of departure for more analyses of how the pattern and socioeconomic changes within family networks. We also find it essential for further research to scrutinize how life style is influenced by various types of social networks using qualitative as well as qualitative methods.

International connections of the project

Results from the project have been presented in various international contexts, including several conferences and meetings. The first results from the analyses of life style and family networks were presented at the 7th International Conference on Population Geographies in Groningen.
Analyses of networks, living arrangements and mortality were presented at the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies conference in Dublin 2015. Analyses of the changing composition of family networks were presented at the 8th International Conference on Population Geographies in Brisbane. Several papers are submitted for possible publication leading international journals. We have been invited to present our results for various research groups e.g. University of St Andrews in Scotland, Queens University, Canada.

International publications

Three articles have been submitted to leading international peer-review journals. Two additional papers are under preparation for submission. All papers have or will be submitted to journals allowing for open access publication.

Research communication measures outside the academic community

The results from the projects have at several occasions been presented outside the academic community including several lectures to the general public or to specific groups outside the academic world, i.e. at the so-called SWEDAGE-conference attended by a large number of employees in caring professions and at Utbildningskanalen.

The most important publications

In one paper (1) we analyse the influence of the socio-economic composition in the family network on life style including an empirical analysis of smoking and its association with education level in the family network. The study provides empirical support for the hypothesis that education in the family network influences the life style and we find it especially interesting that the siblings education level is associated with smoking, even after controlling for own education, the education level of other family members and also the smoking habits in the family network. Similar results were found in analyses of other life style factors and will be published in an additional paper (5). All the above mentioned analyses have been possible to carry out due to the unique combination of data on life style and family network available in the so-called Linnaeus database at the Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research at Umeå University.

In another paper (2) we have analysed how the socio-economic composition in family networks on the national level has changed during the last decades by analysing the extent to which the intra-income disparities (between parents, adult children and siblings) have decreased. The results from the analyses indicate decreasing disparities but are not straight forward since we find differences when comparing men and women, different income strata and when looking at the proximate networks as compared to the whole network. Additional analyses reveal important differences between the larger cities and more sparsely populated areas (6).

Publication strategy

The ambition in the project has been to provide important contributions in high ranked international peer-review journal with open access. So far, three papers are submitted for possible publication in international peer-review journals. The journal papers are submitted to journals that allow open access publication. One further article is in press in an anthology that will be freely available on the internet in the beginning of 2016. Two manuscript are under preparation for submission during 2016.

Papers

1. Malmberg G., Lundevaller E. and Ng N: Smoking prevalence and family members' education level. Submitted.
2. Lundholm E., Sandow E. and Malmberg G.: Decreasing intra-family income disparities? Submitted.
3. Ng N., Santosa A, Weinehall L. and Malmberg G.: Living alone and mortality among older people in Sweden. Submitted.
4. Malmberg G. och Olofsson J: (2016): Äldres sociala nätverk i Sverige och Europa. I Utblick - Sverige i världen. Umeå Universitet.
Papers under preparation
5. Ng N., Lundevaller E., and Malmberg G. Life style and education in family networks. (Draft to be submitted)
6. Malmberg G. Lundholm E and Sandow E. Regional variations in social mobility and family income differentials. (Draft to be submitted)


Link to web page

http://www.cedar.umu.se/forskning/forskningsomraden/ovriga-projekt-vid-cedar/familjenatverk-livsstil-och-halsa/?languageId=3