Exposure to Armed Conflict and Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa
AbstractChanges in fertility patterns are hypothesized to be among the many second-order consequences of armed conflict, but expectations about the direction of such effects are theoretically ambiguous. Prior research, from a range of contexts, has also yielded inconsistent results. We contribute to this debate by using harmonized data and methods to examine the effects of exposure to conflict on preferred and observed fertility outcomes across a spatially and temporally extensive population. We use high-resolution georeferenced data from 25 sub-Saharan African countries, combining records of violent events from the Armed ...
Source: Demography - October 16, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Levels and Trends in Deep and Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1993 –2016
AbstractRecently, there has been tremendous interest in deep and extreme poverty in the United States. We advance beyond prior research by using higher-quality data, improving measurement, and following leading standards in international income research. We estimate deep (less than 20% of medians) and extreme (less than 10% of medians) poverty in the United States from 1993 to 2016. Using the Current Population Survey, we match the income definition of the Luxembourg Income Study and adjust for underreporting using the Urban Institute ’s TRIM3 model. In 2016, we estimate that 5.2 to 7.2 million Americans (1.6% to 2.2%) w...
Source: Demography - October 15, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
A Cautionary Tale of Using Data From the Tail
(Source: Demography)
Source: Demography - October 15, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Further Analyses Reinforce Our Conclusions About Extreme Poverty
(Source: Demography)
Source: Demography - October 15, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Landfall After the Perfect Storm: Cohort Differences in the Relationship Between Debt and Risk of Heart Attack
AbstractAnalyses of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) between 1992 and 2014 compare the relationship between different levels and forms of debt and heart attack risk trajectories across four cohorts. Although all cohorts experienced growing household debt, including the increase of both secured and unsecured debt, they nevertheless encountered different economic opportunity structures and crises at sensitive times in their life courses, with implications for heart attack risk trajectories. Results from frailty hazards models reveal that unsecured debt is associated with increased risk of heart attack across all cohorts...
Source: Demography - October 13, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Enduring Case for Fertility Desires
In this study, we elaborate this paradox: widespread unintendedness and meaningful, highly predictive fertility desires can and do coexist. Using data from Malawi, we demonstrate the predictive validity of numeric fertility timing desires over both four-month and one-year periods. We find that fertility timing desires are highly predictive of pregnancy and that they follow a gradient wherein the likelihood of pregnancy decreases in correspondence with desired time to next birth. This finding holds despite the simultaneous observation of high levels of unintended pregnancy in our sample. Discordance between desires and beha...
Source: Demography - September 30, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Evaluating the Role of Parental Education and Adolescent Health Problems in Educational Attainment
This article reconsiders the role of social origin in health selection by examining whether parental education moderates the association between early health and educational attainment and whether health problems mediate the intergenerational transmission of education. We used longitudinal register data on Finns born in 1986 –1991 (n = 352,899). We measured the completion of secondary and tertiary education until age 27 and used data on hospital care and medication reimbursements to assess chronic somatic conditions, frequent infections, and mental disorders at ages 10 –16. We employed linear probability models to esti...
Source: Demography - September 30, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Historical Trends in Children Living in Multigenerational Households in the United States: 1870 –2018
AbstractOver the last two decades, the share of U.S. children under age 18 who live in a multigenerational household (with a grandparent and parent) has increased dramatically. Yet we do not know whether this increase is a recent phenomenon or a return to earlier levels of coresidence. Using data from the decennial census from 1870 to 2010 and the 2018 American Community Survey, we examine historical trends in children ’s multigenerational living arrangements, differences by race/ethnicity and education, and factors that explain the observed trends. We find that in 2018, 10% of U.S. children lived in a multigenerational ...
Source: Demography - September 30, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
(Source: Demography)
Source: Demography - September 29, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Gender Discrimination and Excess Female Under-5 Mortality in India: A New Perspective Using Mixed-Sex Twins
AbstractSon preference has been linked to excess female under-5 mortality in India, and considerable literature has explored whether parents invest more resources in sons relative to daughters —which we refer to asexplicit discrimination—leading to girls’ poorer health status and, consequently, higher mortality. However, this literature has not adequately controlled for theimplicit discrimination processes that sort girls into different types of families (e.g., larger) and at earlier parities. To better address the endogeneity associated with implicit discrimination processes, we explore the association between child...
Source: Demography - September 24, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
New Partner, New Order? Multipartnered Fertility and Birth Order Effects on Educational Achievement
AbstractA substantial amount of research shows that younger siblings perform worse than their older sisters and brothers in several socioeconomic outcomes, including educational achievement. Most of these studies examined stable families and excluded half-siblings. However, the increasing prevalence of multipartnered fertility implies that many children grow up in nonnuclear families. We examine whether there is evidence for birth order effects in this context, which offers an opportunity to test and potentially expand the explanatory scope of the two main theories on birth order effects. We use comprehensive Norwegian reg...
Source: Demography - September 14, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Income Segregation: Up or Down, and for Whom?
AbstractReports of rising income segregation in the United States have been brought into question by the observation that post-2000 estimates are upwardly biased because of a reduction in the sample sizes on which they are based. Recent studies have offered estimates of this sample-count bias using public data. We show here that there are two substantial sources of systematic bias in estimating segregation levels: bias associated with sample size and bias associated with using weighted sample data. We rely on new correction methods using the original census sample data for individual households to provide more accurate est...
Source: Demography - September 14, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Effects of Marital Status, Fertility, and Bereavement on Adult Mortality in Polygamous and Monogamous Households: Evidence From the Utah Population Database
AbstractAlthough the associations among marital status, fertility, bereavement, and adult mortality have been widely studied, much less is known about these associations in polygamous households, which remain prevalent across much of the world. We use data from the Utah Population Database on 110,890 women and 106,979 men born up to 1900, with mortality follow-up into the twentieth century. We examine how the number of wife deaths affects male mortality in polygamous marriages, how sister wife deaths affect female mortality in polygamous marriages relative to the death of a husband, and how marriage order affects the morta...
Source: Demography - September 14, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Effects of Enhanced Enforcement at Mexico ’s Southern Border: Evidence From Central American Deportees
AbstractImmigration enforcement cooperation between final-destination and transit countries has increased in the last decades. I examine whether the Southern Border Plan, an immigration enforcement program implemented by the Mexican government in 2014, has curbed intentions of unauthorized migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to migrate to the United States. I use the announcement of the Southern Border Plan to implement a difference-in-differences approach and compare the evolution of short-run intentions to engage in additional unauthorized crossings of Central American (treatment group) relative to Mexican...
Source: Demography - September 9, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Biases in Survey Estimates of Neonatal Mortality: Results From a Validation Study in Urban Areas of Guinea-Bissau
AbstractNeonatal deaths (occurring within 28 days of birth) account for close to one-half of all deaths among children under age 5 worldwide. In most low- and middle-income countries, data on neonatal deaths come primarily from household surveys. We conducted a validation study of survey data on neonatal mortality in Guinea-Bissau (West Africa). We used records from an urban health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) that monitors child survival prospectively as our reference data set. We selected a stratified sample of 599 women aged 15 –49 among residents of the HDSS and collected the birth histories of 422 part...
Source: Demography - September 9, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
