Population Research and Policy Review最新文献

Women returning to their natal homes for pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum is common and understudied in South Asia, with important implications for maternal and newborn health policies, as well as data quality and interpretation. Using data from 1252 women residing in a Health and Demographic Surveillance Site in Maharashtra, India we explore timing, duration and associated socio-economic factors with Temporary Childbirth Migration (TCM). Our overall goal is to develop a definition of temporary childbirth migration and situate it within demographic migration theory. Most (80%) of women migrated for over 1 month in the last trimester of pregnancy, with a sizeable proportion (22%) departing immediately after delivery. Socio-demographic factors were not associated with migrating during pregnancy; migrating postpartum was associated with younger age and higher education. Based on these findings, we propose a definition of Temporary childbirth Migration as a form of migration from husbands to natal homes and back, for at least one month duration, with departure and return at any time in the perinatal period. Given the potentially large number of women moving location for an extended duration in every pregnancy (in a country of over 1.4 billion), programs providing services to pregnant women and newborns should take this phenomenon into consideration. Additionally, data collection efforts at the clinical and household level should understand that women's place of delivery or receipt of prenatal or postnatal services may differ from her normal place of residence.

Limited data are available on the characteristics and outcomes both of people who have and who have not had an abortion. Administrative data sources contain information on aggregate abortion counts and some demographic characteristics describing individuals who had an abortion but not on those who did not have an abortion. They are therefore of limited use for analyzing the characteristics, reproductive behaviors, and attitudes associated with abortion risk. Direct questions in population representative surveys yield downwardly biased estimates of abortion and likely differential underreporting of abortion by socio-demographic characteristics. In the present study, we evaluate the effectiveness of an indirect survey method, the list experiment, for improving estimates of abortion risk and differentials in population-representative surveys. We estimate cumulative-lifetime abortion incidence in 2017 and five-year incidence in 2021 using two cross-sectional surveys administered in Delaware and Maryland and evaluate the five-year estimates against external benchmarks from administrative data. We use multivariate regression with the list-experiment data to examine abortion incidence by socio-demographic predictors. We find that list-experiment estimates of five-year abortion incidence are similar to estimates calculated from external data: that cumulative lifetime abortion incidence increases monotonically with age, and that five-year incidence is inverse U-shaped. Black adults are found to be much more likely to have had an abortion both in the past five-years and over the reproductive lifetime, before and after controlling for age, parity, relationship status, education, and household income. We conclude positively about the validity and utility of the list experiment method.

Higher levels of both individual education and community education may facilitate improved sexual and reproductive health knowledge, but our understanding of this relationship in sub-Saharan Africa remains limited. Drawing on human capital and social learning theories, and Demographic Health Survey data from Uganda, we examine the independent and interactive associations between individual and community education and two outcomes-HIV prevention knowledge and knowledge of different contraceptive methods-including differences by gender. Consistent with human capital and social learning theories, results from multilevel regression models show that both individual education and community education levels are independently and positively associated with more accurate sexual and reproductive health knowledge. Further, in support of the idea that human capital and social learning theories work in tandem, we find that the association between individual education and HIV knowledge is stronger in less educated communities, and grows weaker as community education increases, for both men and women. Similarly, for men, but not women, the association between individual education and contraceptive knowledge is stronger in less educated communities and weaker as community education increases. Among women, individual education was strongly and positively associated with contraceptive knowledge, an association that varied little across more or less educated communities. Our findings suggest that policy makers should consider community education levels when developing priorities for sexual and reproductive health knowledge interventions.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09958-y.

Despite low U.S. fertility rates since the Great Recession, two-child norms remain pervasive, suggesting individuals are unable to achieve their goals. To understand what may be driving the apparent mismatch between goals and behavior, we focus on pregnancy avoidance, as individuals may be deciding against births in the short term rather than deciding not to have any, or any more, children. Further, we incorporate subjective evaluations of the future related to economic and relational factors as well as objective socioeconomic indicators, drawing from the Narratives of the Future framework and Easterlin's theory about expected standard of living. We use data from the 2018-2020 wave of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (N = 880), a population-based dataset, to examine short-term pregnancy avoidance among adults aged 29-36. We find that higher levels of personal economic pessimism and concerns about having a good relationship in the future are associated with greater importance of avoiding a pregnancy in the short term, even when controlling for objective characteristics such as economic hardship, relationship status, and other sociodemographic covariates. The results highlight the need to incorporate both subjective and objective statuses in research on fertility decision-making, and the implications of these findings point to short-term pregnancy avoidance and fertility postponement as a potential mechanism underlying contemporary low birth rates in the U.S.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09962-2.

As young adults, the Millennial generation emerged as the largest and most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history. These unique demographic characteristics, along with more progressive self-reported views on racial and ethnic issues, prompted some to label this generation as a demographic bridge to America's diverse future. This article examines whether these unique characteristics translate into greater neighborhood racial diversity and integration. Specifically, this study sets out to answer whether the neighborhoods where Millennial young adults live are more racially and ethnically diverse and situated in less segregated metropolitan areas than those where young adults from prior generations resided. Using 1990-2020 Census data, we find that young adult Millennials are living in less segregated neighborhoods than their counterparts from previous generations. This pattern holds whether examining the segregation of White young adults from the total population or restricting the analysis to segregation solely among young adults. We further find that a greater presence of White young adult Millennials is positively associated with neighborhood diversity. However, our decomposition analysis, which disaggregates segregation to the agegroup level, suggests that increased uneven sorting among Late Millennial young adults is also driving racial imbalances within neighborhoods among younger and older age groups.

Working age (25-64) mortality in the US has been increasing for decades, driven in part by rising deaths due to drug overdose, as well as increases in suicide and alcohol-related mortality. These deaths have been hypothesized by some to be due to despair, but this has rarely been empirically tested. For despair to explain mortality due to alcohol-related liver disease, suicide, and drug overdose, it must first predict the behaviors that lead to such causes of death. To that end, we aim to answer two research questions. First, does despair predict the behaviors that are antecedent to the "deaths of despair"? Second, what measures and domains of despair are most important? We use data from over 6000 individuals at five waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and apply supervised machine learning to assess the role of despair in predicting self-destructive behaviors associated with these causes of death. Comparing predictive performance within each outcome using measures of despair to benchmark models of clinical and prior behavioral predictors, we evaluate the added predictive value of despair above and beyond established risk factors. We find that despair underperforms compared to clinical risk factors for suicidal ideation and heavy drinking, but over performs compared to clinical risk factors and prior behaviors for illegal drug use and prescription drug misuse. We also compare model performance and feature importance across outcomes; our ability to predict thoughts of suicide, drug abuse and misuse, and heavy drinking differs depending on the behavior, and the relative importance of different indicators of despair varies across outcomes as well. Our findings suggest that the self-destructive behaviors are distinct and the pathways from despair to self-destructive behavior varied. The results draw into question the relevance of despair as a unifying framework for understanding the current crisis in midlife health and mortality.

Restrictive abortion policies have generated reductions in abortion access, increased travel distance to abortion clinics as a result of clinic closures, and produced declines in maternal health outcomes. This study explores the effects of Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8), the most restrictive bill prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, on abortion access in Texas. We used a difference-in-differences approach to explore the heterogeneous effects of SB8 on abortion access for communities of varying socioeconomic statuses and travel distances using 16 months of SafeGraph Inc. mobile phone pattern data for 21 Texas and four Oklahoma abortion clinics between January 1, 2021, and April 30, 2022. Implementation of SB8 was associated with 34% fewer abortion clinic visits in Texas than in Oklahoma. The effects of SB8 on access to abortion care across state borders had a disproportionately greater impact on women in low-income communities. This study provides further evidence of the discriminatory impacts of SB8 in Texas.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09948-0.

In rural high-fertility settings where people depend on subsistence agriculture, children are expected to provide material support to their parents in later life, with implications for physical health and material well-being of parents. Substantial research has examined these material consequences. Fewer studies have examined the implications of parenthood for subjective well-being in these contexts, in contrast to a larger body of research in low-fertility contexts. The existing studies of parenthood and subjective well-being in high-fertility contexts suggest that this relationship depends on parents' gender and age, but do not distinguish between the impact of parent life stage and the impact of child age and other child characteristics. In this study, we draw on data from a population-based survey of ever-married women in rural Gaza Province, Mozambique, to show how mid-life women's subjective well-being, measured as life satisfaction, is related to the number, age, and residential status of children. We also investigate whether the association between children's characteristics and mother's life satisfaction is mediated by other domains related to anticipated returns to childbearing, such as household economic conditions and mother's physical and mental health. Results show that having young children in the household is negatively associated with life satisfaction, while having older children living outside the country is positively associated with life satisfaction. These associations are not fully explained by potential mechanisms such as economic conditions. We reflect on the implications of these findings in a context of changing livelihood strategies.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09978-8.

State-level social policy and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population concentration are key measures that are often used as indicators reflecting geographic social climate. Still, research has yet to investigate how they may be interrelated, including the degree to which the LGBT population are subject to certain policies. Using population-based experimental data from the Household Pulse Survey and policy measures from the Movement Advancement Project, we compared measures of state-level policy and concentration of the LGBT population for 2022. After calculating the correlation between these two constructs, the authors identified state-level variation in these measures for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC. With a correlation of 0.58, the findings revealed variation at the state level and indicated that LGBT population concentration and state-level LGBT policy do not necessarily reflect synonymous social phenomena and constitute distinct but complementary measures for use in constructing indices of structural heterosexism and social climate.

Son preference and prenatal sex-selection against females (PSS) among British Asian communities, raised considerable media attention, leading to parliamentary debates on abortion laws in Britain in 2015. PSS among India-born mothers in the 1990s was indirectly evidenced in past UK study by analysing sex-ratios at birth. However, we lack reliable quantitative evidence to document the practice in Britain since 2005 and regulations remained unchanged, offering a unique opportunity to test the need (or not) for abortion regulation to curtail PSS practice. Using annual sex ratio at birth counts from 1969 to 2018 and applying novel indicators, I found that sex-selection prevalence among India-born mothers is reduced in recent years, from its peak at about 4% in the 1990-2005 period. This decline is independent of specific legislation on sex-selective abortion and suggests a weakening of son preference. A reduction in prenatal sex-selection prevalence in Britain, shows that curbing the practice does not request stricter (sex-selection) abortion law. The findings support policy approaches addressing root-causes of gender preference to reduce PSS, while preserving current abortion rights.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09974-y.