Awards and Juries 2015

The winner of the 2015 Young Author Prize is:

Emanuela Struffolino (Berlin Social Science Center) for the article : Self-reported health among lone mothers: Do employment and education matter? (Download)

Emanuela Struffolino, Laura Bernardi, Marieke Voorpostel

Lone mothers are more likely to be unemployed and in poverty, which are both factors associated with a risk of poor health. In Switzerland, weak work-family reconciliation policies and taxation that favours married couples adopting the traditional male breadwinner model translate into low labour market participation rate for mothers. In the case of lone mothers, employment can be associated with better health because it eases the potential economic hardship associated with being the sole earner. However, working can represent an additional stress factor due to lone mothers’ responsibility as the main caregiver. We investigate how family arrangements and employment status are associated with self-reported health in Switzerland. Our analyses on the Swiss Household Panel (waves 1999-2011) suggest that lone mothers who are out of the labour market have a higher probability of reporting poor health, especially if holding an upper-secondary diploma. Lone mothers reported being in better health when working full-time vs. part-time, whereas the opposite applied to mothers living with a partner.

 

International jury

Jury chair: Marianne Kempeneers (Université de Montréal)

Jury members:

  • Nico Kielman (University of Oslo)
  • Emmanuelle Cambois (INED, Paris)
  • Bruno Schoumaker (Université catholique de Louvain)
  • Olivia Samuel (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, editor of Population)

 

Competing authors

For the first edition of the young author’s prize, Population received 26 entries. The paper were wide-ranging in scope and of very high quality, reflecting the potential of a promising new generation of international demographers. Their authors came from 11 different countries on four continents – Europe, Africa, Asia and North America – with 11 articles submitted in English and 15 in French. The research topics concerned the traditional themes of demography (fertility, nuptiality, mortality and migration) and beyond (education, employment, housing…), and applied a variety of approaches and methods, sometimes based on a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data.

 

Choosing the 2015 prize winner

In an initial selection process, 4 of the 26 papers received were eliminated. The 22 remaining papers were each assessed by two anonymous external reviewers. During the final deliberations on 9 February 2010, discussions focused not only on choosing a winner, but also on selecting the authors who would be invited to submit a revised version of their paper to the Population editorial committee.

In view of the competition’s success, Population has decided to organize a new competition in 2016, and warmly welcomes entries from young authors working on demographic research questions.

 

Marianne Kempeneers