FAMSIM : Dynamic Microsimulation of Life Course Interactions between Education, Work, Partnership Formation and Birth in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden

Microsimulation models are getting increasingly popular in the Social Sciences and they have been used to investigate many problems related to social security and tax benefits, among many other applications. Many national microsimulation models now exist and recently there has been an interest for models that can be used for international comparisons. In this paper we introduce such a model, dubbed FAMSIM. The first part of the paper briefly describes some of the approaches and traditions of microsimulation. The second part introduces the FAMSIM model and the Family and Fertility Survey (FFS) data used. As the FFS data are available for more than 20 countries in a standardized way, they allow for international comparative studies. The results of the parameter estimation for five European countries namely Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden are then presented and discussed. Finally some simulation runs for Austria are presented. This preliminary investigation has shown that the behavioural models are very useful for comparing risk patterns for life course events such as partnership formation and fertility for women in the five countries. The simulation runs for Austria showed that the forecasts are stable and correspond fairly well to macro measures from independent sources.