The Harmonized Histories is an international comparative dataset, created through harmonizing data from existing surveys into one common format. The aim of the Harmonized Histories is to facilitate cross-national research on topics related to transition to adulthood, family formation, and non-marital childbearing.  The dataset focuses on fertility and partnership histories, organized in a way that makes it well suited for event history analysis. In addition, it captures socio-economic status, place of residence, information on the childhood family (e.g. parental divorce, number of siblings), etc.

Step 1. Register / sign in as a GGP User on the website
Step 2. Submit a new form for the required datasets: ‘All countries (Light Access) – Harmonized Histories’
Step 3. Await the e-mail with further information
Step 4. Sign and send the data-agreement(s)

If you use the dataset “Harmonized Histories”, please cite:

Perelli-Harris, Brienna, Michaela Kreyenfeld, and Karolin Kubisch (2010). Technical Manual for the Harmonized Histories Database. Rostock, MPIDR Working paper 2010-011.

If you use the dataset “Harmonized Histories I”, please cite:

Koops, Judith. C., Kubisch, Karolin, Beaupré, Pascale, Cabella, Wanda, Fernández Soto, Mariana, Fostik, Ana, Mogi, Ryohei, Nathan, Mathias, Pardo, Ignacio, Pedetti, Gaby, Simon, Sebastian (2022) Harmonized Histories I. Generations and Gender Programme.

If you use the dataset “Harmonized Histories II”, please cite:

Schumann, Almut, Allegra, Salvatore Filadelfo, Meli, Eleonora (2024) Harmonized Histories II. Generations and Gender Programme.

¹ Generations and Gender Survey
² General Social Survey
³ Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics
⁴ Family and Fertility Survey
⁵ Onderzoek Gezinsvorming
⁶ Spanish Fertility Survey (Encuesta de Fecundidad)
⁷ British Household Panel Study
⁸ Reproductive Behavior Survey (Encuesta de Comportamientos Reproductivo)
⁹ National Survey for Family Growth ⁶ Spanish Fertility Survey (Encuesta de Fecundidad)
¹⁰ Families, social subjects and life cycle Survey

Changing Life Course Regimes (CLiCR)

The Changing Life Course Regimes (CLiCR) data cover 19 post-socialist contexts: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. It is constructed with the publicly available data sources: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Family and Fertility Surveys (FFS), Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS) and the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS). The standardization process is based on and largely adopts the strategy behind the Harmonized Histories. The data was harmonized by Aija Duntava and Sunnee Billingsley. The project received financial contribution from the Stockholm Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (SCOHOST) at Södertörns University and the Linnaeus Center on Social Policy and Family Dynamics at Stockholm University’s Demography Unit. Contact Sunnee Billingsley to receive the list of permissions from DHS, FFS and GGS that must be submitted before accessing the data. More information can be found here.

Understanding Society: Partnership and Fertility Histories

Based on data from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, partnership and fertility histories are harmonized as part of the GGP Harmonized Histories. Understanding Society is a British household panel which started in 2009. It is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, and the survey research organisations Kantar Public and NatCen. The partnership and fertility histories of adult respondents are harmonized up to wave 9. The standardisation process follows the guidelines of the Harmonized Histories and makes it comparable with Harmonized Histories data files from other countries. The availability of several panel waves makes it possible to provide two datasets: The first one includes a cross-sectional Harmonized Histories dataset with retrospective information based on wave 1, the second dataset contains updated information from the following years until wave 9. We acknowledge the work by Brienna Perelli-Harris, Niels Blom and Karolin Kubisch for making these datasets available. More information about data access and the project can be found here.

Harmonized Histories team

Since 2015 the Harmonized Histories dataset is developed and expanded by researchers from different institutes. We acknowledge the important contributions of the project coordinator Almut Schumann (German Federal Institute for Population Research) who is in charge of harmonizing and documenting the datasets. We thank Judith C. Koops (Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute) for her important efforts in coordinating the project and supporting the harmonisation process until the beginning of 2022 as well as all researchers and institutes who have contributed to the harmonization and preparatory work of the data (see List of Individual Contributors).

The development of the project would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in The Hague and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock.

Initiators

We are very grateful to Brienna Perelli-Harris, Michaela Kreyenfeld, Karolin Kubisch, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, Renske Keizer, Paola DiGiulio, and all members of the Nonmarital Childbearing Network www.nonmarital.org from various research institutions who in 2009 initiated the idea of a comparative database of union and fertility histories.

We acknowledge the important contribution of the project head Brienna Perelli-Harris (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and later University of Southampton), project leader Michaela Kreyenfeld (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research), Karolin Kubisch (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) who managed the standardization and cleaning process of the surveys, drew up detailed documentation, updated the surveys, and responded to users, and Sigrid Gellers-Barkmann (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) who managed data distribution from Rostock and was responsible for data protection and contacts with users.

The development of the project in the period 2009-2015 would not have been possible without the encouragement and financial support of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock and the support from the Datalab of the MPI and especially its head Vladimir Shkolnikov, who supported the enormous amount of work of Karolin Kubisch on this project. We are also grateful to the former director of MPIDR Joshua Goldstein for his support.

2023

• Cukrowska-Torzewska, E., & Grabowska, M. (2023). The sex preference for children in Europe: Children’s sex and the probability and timing of births. Demographic Research, 203-232.
• Fostik, A., Fernández Soto, M., Ruiz-Vallejo, F., & Ciganda, D. (2023). Union Instability and Fertility: An International Perspective. European Journal of Population, 39(1), 25.
• Mortelmans, D., Claessens, E. & Thielemans, G. (2023). Defining and measuring singlehood in family studies, Journal of Family Theory & Review, 15, 485–505.

2022

• Mogi, R., Esteve, A. & Skirbekk, V. F. (2022). The Decline of Spanish Fertility: The Role of Religion, European Journal of Population, 38, 1333–1346.
• Nishikido, M., Cui, Q., & Esteve, A. (2022). Partnership dynamics and the fertility gap between Sweden and Spain. Genus, 78(26).
• Billingsley, S., Neyer, G., & Wesolowski, K. (2022). Social Investment Policies and Childbearing Across 20 Countries: Longitudinal and Micro-Level Analyses. European Journal of Population, 1-24.
• Castro Torres, A. F., Batyra, E., & Myrskylä, M. (2022). Income inequality and increasing dispersion of the transition to first birth in the Global South. Population and Development Review, 48(1), 189-215.

2021

• Koops, J. C. (2021). Nonmarital fertility in Europe and North-America: what is the role of parental SES and own SES?. In Social Background and the Demographic Life Course: Cross-National Comparisons (pp. 35-59). Springer, Cham.
• Corral, O. P., & Danet, A. D. (2021). Gender analysis of the Spanish Fertility Survey 2018. Gaceta sanitaria, 36(3), 221-231.
• Thomson, E., Dahlberg, J., & Svallfors, S. (2021). Childbearing across partnerships in Europe and the United States. Stockholm Research Reports in Demography, Stockholm University Demography Unit.
• Koops, J. C., Liefbroer, A. C., & Gauthier, A. H. (2021). Socio-economic differences in the prevalence of single motherhood in North America and Europe. European Journal of Population, 37(4), 825-849.
• Solaz, A. (2021). More frequent separation and repartnering among people aged 50 and over. Population Societies, 586(2), 1-4.
• Kalmijn, M., & Leopold, T. (2021). A new look at the separation surge in Europe: Contrasting adult and child perspectives. American Sociological Review, 86(1), 1-34.
• Koops, J. C., Liefbroer, A. C., & Gauthier, A. H. (2021). Having a child within a cohabiting union in Europe and North America: What is the role of parents’ socio‐economic status?. Population, Space and Place, 27(6), e2434.
• Brons, M. D., Liefbroer, A. C., & Ganzeboom, H. B. (2021). Parental socioeconomic status and the timing of first marriage. Demographic Research, 45, 469-516.
• Groepler, N., Huinink, J., & Peter, T. (2021). Does the birth of a child still prompt a marriage? A comparison of Austria, France, Germany and Hungary. European Societies, 23(3), 333-359.
• Brons, M. D. (2021). Cross-National Variation in the Link Between Parental Socio-Economic Status and Union Formation and Dissolution Processes. In Social Background and the Demographic Life Course: Cross-National Comparisons (pp. 17-34). Springer, Cham.
• Härkönen, J., Brons, M. D., & Dronkers, J. (2021). Family forerunners? Parental separation and partnership formation in 16 countries. Journal of Marriage and Family, 83(1), 119-136.

2020

• Thomson, E., Gray, E., & Carlson, M. J. (2020). Multi-partner fertility in Europe and the United States. In Analyzing contemporary fertility (pp. 173-198). Springer, Cham.
• Koops, J. C. (2020). Understanding nonmarital childbearing: the role of socio-economic background and ethnicity in Europe and North-America.
• Sassler, S., & Lichter, D. T. (2020). Cohabitation and marriage: Complexity and diversity in union‐formation patterns. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 35-61.
• Fernandez Soto, M., Fostik, A., & Laplante, B. (2020). Welfare Regimes and Fertility in Second Unions. In Analyzing Contemporary Fertility (pp. 199-235). Springer, Cham.
• Muller, J. S., Hiekel, N., & Liefbroer, A. C. (2020). The long-term costs of family trajectories: Women’s later-life employment and earnings across Europe. Demography, 57(3), 1007-1034.

2019

• Recksiedler, C. & Bernardi, L. (2019). Lone Mothers’ Repartnering Trajectories and Health: Does the Welfare Context Matter? Journal of Family Issues, 40(17), 2582–2604.
• Thomson, E., Winkler-Dworak, M., & Beaujouan, É. (2019). Contribution of the rise in cohabiting parenthood to family instability: Cohort change in Italy, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. Demography, 56(6), 2063-2082.
• Di Giulio, P., Impicciatore, R., & Sironi, M. (2019). The changing pattern of cohabitation. Demographic Research, 40, 1211-1248.

2018

• Mikolai, J., Berrington, A., & Perelli-Harris, B. (2018). The role of education in the intersection of partnership transitions and motherhood in Europe and the United States. Demographic Research, 39, 753-794.
• Zilincikova, Z. (2018). Cohabitation breakup: mapping of the phenomenon and its consequences across European countries, Masaryk University.