The Dynamics of U.S. Household Economic Circumstances Around a Birth
AbstractWith the arrival of an infant, many households face increased demands on resources, changes in the composition of income, and a potentially heightened risk of income inadequacy. Changing household economic circumstances around a birth have implications for child and family well-being, women ’s economic security, and public program design, yet have received little research attention in the United States. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study provides new descriptive evidence of month-to-month changes in household income adequacy and the composition of household income in the ye...
Source: Demography - July 22, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
A Framework for Explaining Black-White Inequality in Homeownership Sustainability
This study proposes a conceptual framework for understanding Black-White inequality in homeownership sustainability, which emphasizes Black homeowners’ socioeconomic challenges that are external to mortgage market evaluations, with a particular focus on the medi ating role of liquid assets. Based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the framework is put to an empirical test on the differential exit rates between Black and White homeowners in the United States during the recent housing crisis. The findings indicate that the racial gap in homeownership exit is eliminated after liquid wealth is controlled in the model alo...
Source: Demography - July 22, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Effects of Education on Mortality: Evidence From Linked U.S. Census and Administrative Mortality Data
AbstractDoes education change people ’s lives in a way that delays mortality? Or is education primarily a proxy for unobserved endowments that promote longevity? Most scholars conclude that the former is true, but recent evidence based on Danish twin data calls this conclusion into question. Unfortunately, these potentially field-cha nging findings—that obtaining additional schooling has no independent effect on survival net of other hard-to-observe characteristics—have not yet been subject to replication outside Scandinavia. In this article, we produce the first U.S.-based estimates of the effects of education on mo...
Source: Demography - July 20, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Twins Support the Absence of Parity-Dependent Fertility Control in Pretransition Populations
In this study, we use the accident of twin births to show that for three Western European –derived pre-industrial populations—namely, England (1730–1879), France (1670–1788), and Québec (1621–1835)—we find no evidence for parity-dependent control of marital fertility. If a twin was born in any of these populations, family size increased by 1 compared with families with a sin gleton birth at the same parity and mother age, with no reduction of subsequent fertility. Numbers of children surviving to age 14 also increased. Twin births also show no differential effect on fertility when they occurred at high paritie...
Source: Demography - July 16, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Does Opportunity Skip Generations? Reassessing Evidence From Sibling and Cousin Correlations
AbstractSibling (cousin) correlations are empirically straightforward: they capture the degree to which siblings ’ (cousins’) socioeconomic outcomes are similar. At face value, these quantities seem to summarize something about how families constrain opportunity. Their meaning, however, is complicated. One empirical set of sibling and cousin correlations can be generated from a multitude of distinct theore tical processes. I illustrate this problem in the context of multigenerational mobility: the relationship between the incomes of an ancestor and a descendant separated by several generations in a family. When cousins...
Source: Demography - July 6, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Revisiting the Fertility Transition in England and Wales: The Role of Social Class and Migration
AbstractWe use individual-level census data for England and Wales for the period 1851 –1911 to investigate the interplay between social class and geographical context determining patterns of childbearing during the fertility transition. We also consider the effect of spatial mobility or lifetime migration on individual fertility behavior in the early phases of demographic moderniza tion. Prior research on the fertility transition in England and Wales has demonstrated substantial variation in fertility levels and declines by different social groups; however, these findings were generally reported at a broad geographical l...
Source: Demography - June 30, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Measuring Housing Stability With Consumer Reference Data
AbstractHousing instability for low-income renters has drawn greater attention recently, but measurement has limited research on policies to stabilize housing. Address histories from consumer reference data can be used to increase the quantity and quality of research on low-income renters. Consumer data track housing moves throughout the entire United States for most of the adult population. In this article, I show that such data can measure housing stability for groups with very low income and extreme instability. For example, the data can track housing moves during natural disasters, at demolition of public housing, for ...
Source: Demography - June 23, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Cohort Trends in the Association Between Sibship Size and Educational Attainment in 26 Low-Fertility Countries
AbstractChildren with many siblings have lower average educational attainment compared with children raised in smaller families, and this disadvantage by sibship size has been observed across many countries. We still know remarkably little, however, about how sibship size disadvantage has changed within countries and how such trends vary across countries. Using comparative data from 111 surveys from 26 low-fertility countries, we find an overall trend of growing sibship size disadvantage across cohorts in the majority of countries: between the 1931 –1940 birth cohort and the 1971–1980 birth cohort, 16 of 26 countries s...
Source: Demography - June 21, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Gender Segregation, Occupational Sorting, and Growth of Wage Disparities Between Women
AbstractAverage female wages in traditionally male occupations have steeply risen over the past couple of decades in Germany. This trend led to a new and substantial pay gap between women working in male-typed occupations and other women. I dissect the emergence of these wage disparities between women, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1992 –2015). Compositional change with respect to education is the main driver for growing inequality. Other factors are less influential but still relevant: marginal returns for several wage-related personal characteristics have grown faster in male-typed occupations. Net o...
Source: Demography - June 21, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Does Information Change Attitudes Toward Immigrants?
AbstractStrategies aimed at reducing negative attitudes toward immigrants are at the core of integration policies. A large literature shows that misperceptions about the size and characteristics of immigrants are common. A few studies implemented interventions to correct innumeracy regarding the size of the immigrant population, but they did not detect any effects on attitudes. We study whether providing information not only about the size but also about the characteristics of the immigrant population can have stronger effects. We conduct two online experiments with samples from the United States, providing one-half of the...
Source: Demography - June 17, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Emergence of Educational Hypogamy in India
AbstractWith rising education among women across the world, educational hypergamy (women marrying men with higher education) has decreased over the last few decades in both developed and developing countries. Although a decrease in hypergamy is often accompanied by increasing homogamy (women marrying men with equal levels of education), our analyses for India based on a nationally representative survey of India (the India Human Development Survey), document a considerable rise in hypogamy (women marrying partners with lower education) during the past four decades. Log-linear analyses further reveal that declining hypergamy...
Source: Demography - June 9, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Household Structure Transition in China: 1982 –2015
AbstractChinese society has experienced a dramatic change over the past several decades, which has had a profound impact on its household system. Utilizing the Chinese national census and 1% population survey data from 1982 to 2015, this study demonstrates the transition of the Chinese household structure through typology analyses. Five typical regional household structure types —large lineal, large nuclear, small nuclear, mixed lineal, and small and diverse—are identified. Our findings demonstrate that since the 1980s, the household system in almost all Chinese regions has evolved from a large unitary model to a small...
Source: Demography - June 9, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
A Bayesian Reconstruction of a Historical Population in Finland, 1647 –1850
This article provides a novel method for estimating historical population development. We review the previous literature on historical population time-series estimates and propose a general outline to address the well-known methodological problems. We use a Bayesian hierarchical time-series model that allows us to integrate the parish-level data set and prior population information in a coherent manner. The procedure provides us with model-based posterior intervals for the final population estimates. We demonstrate its applicability by estimating the long-term development of Finland ’s population from 1647 onward and sim...
Source: Demography - June 8, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
Counting on Potential Grandparents? Adult Children ’s Entry Into Parenthood Across European Countries
This study is the first to investigate whether would-be grandparents’ propensity to care for their grandchildren influences the adult children’s transition to parenthood. Because grandparental childcare provision is not observable at the time of the transition to the first birth, I built a measure based on the characteristics of both actual grandparents and adult children to act as a proxy for the childcare that prospective grandparents are expected to provide in the future. Using data from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe, I examine changes in the likelihood of having a firs...
Source: Demography - June 8, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
The Intergenerational Impact of Terror: Did the 9/11 Tragedy Impact the Initial Human Capital of the Next Generation?
This study also documents a positively selected post-attack fertility response, which would bias an evaluation that includes cohorts conceived after September 11, 2001, in the control group. (Source: Demography)
Source: Demography - June 7, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research
