Introduction to the special issue on 'The dynamics of stepfamilies in cross-national perspective'

This paper investigates the economic conditions of stepfamilies in Germany, the Russian Federation and France using data from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS). The analysis shows that stepfamilies more often report economic hardship than nuclear families in France and Western Germany. Socio-demographic differences between family types – particularly the fact that stepfamilies tend to be larger families – explain the differences in economic well-being between families in France. For Western Germany, differences between nuclear and stepfamilies remain after controlling for socio-economic composition of different family types. For the Russian Federation and Eastern Germany, we do not find any statistically significant differences in economic well-being between stepfamilies and nuclear families. The major dividing line for these regions runs between single parents and other types of families.