Population Studies-A Journal of Demography最新文献

Age gaps between partners have undergone dramatic changes in high-income countries over the past century. Yet, there has been little focus on age gaps for immigrants and their descendants. This is an important omission because age gaps can be interpreted as a macro-level indicator of intergenerational adaptation. We examine the age gaps of biological parents (childbearing partners) among immigrants and their descendants in Sweden, a country with high gender equality and a stable mean age gap. Using longitudinal, whole-population data, we examine changes in age gaps for cohorts born 1950-86. Cohort trends in age gaps often follow very different patterns for male and female immigrants, with limited evidence of adaptation across cohorts. However, there is considerable evidence of adaptation towards the Swedish norm among the second generation, including from direct comparison between immigrants and their children. The largest differences between women and men are seen among the first generation with a Swedish-born partner.

The Brazilian period total fertility rate (PTFR) dropped to 1.8 in 2010 (1.5 among those with high education). Due to shifts in fertility timing, the PTFR may provide a misleading picture of fertility levels. The consequences of these changes for the cohort total fertility rate (CTFR)-a measure free from tempo distortions-and for educational differences in completed fertility remain unknown. Due to data limitations, CTFR forecasts in low- and middle-income countries are rare. We use Brazilian censuses to reconstruct fertility rates indirectly and forecast the CTFR for all women and by educational level. Four forecasting methods indicate that the CTFR is unlikely to fall to the level of the PTFR. Educational differences in the CTFR are likely to be stark, at 0.7-0.9, larger than in many high-income countries with comparable CTFRs. We show how the CTFR can be forecasted in settings with limited data and call for more research on educational differences in completed fertility in low- and middle-income countries.

Death of a parent during childhood has become rare in developed countries but remains an important life course event that may have consequences for family formation. This paper describes the link between parental death before age 18 and fertility outcomes in adulthood. Using the large national 2011 French Family Survey (INSEE-INED), we focus on the 1946-66 birth cohorts, for whom we observe entire fertility histories. The sample includes 11,854 respondents who have lost at least one parent before age 18. We find a strong polarization of fertility behaviours among orphaned males, more pronounced for those coming from a disadvantaged background. More often childless, particularly when parental death occurred in adolescence, some seem to retreat from parenthood. But orphaned men and women who do become parents seem to embrace family life, by beginning childbearing earlier and having more children, especially when the deceased parent is of the same sex.

Earlier research has documented a relationship between parity and all-cause mortality, as well as parity and cause-specific mortality (e.g. cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality). Less is known about the relationship between parity and two very common (but less deadly) types of disorder: mental and musculoskeletal. We examine the association between parity and risk of disability pensioning from all causes and due to mental or musculoskeletal disorders, using Norwegian register data. In addition to controlling for adult socio-demographic characteristics, we control for unobserved confounding from family background by estimating sibling fixed-effects models. We find a higher risk of disability pensioning among the childless and those with one child than for parents with two children, both for all causes combined and for mental disorders. Childless men and fathers with one child also experience excess risk of being pensioned due to musculoskeletal disorders. For mental disorders, we find a positive association with high parity, particularly for men.

While there is a large literature investigating migrant marriage or fertility, little research has examined how childbearing and partnerships are interrelated. In this paper, we investigate how childbearing and partnership trajectories evolve and interact over the life course for immigrants and their descendants and how the relationship varies by migrant origin. We apply multichannel sequence analysis to rich longitudinal survey data from France and find significant differences in family-related behaviour between immigrants, their descendants, and the native French. Immigrants' family behaviour is characterized by stronger association between marriage and childbearing than in the native population. However, there are significant differences across migrant groups. Turkish immigrants exhibit the most conservative family pathways. By contrast, the family behaviour of European immigrants is similar to that of the native population. The study also demonstrates that the family behaviour of some descendant groups has gradually become indistinguishable from that of the native French, whereas for other groups significant differences in family behaviour persist.Supplementary material for this article is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2022.2049856.

New data based on retrospective interviews with older informants enable us to review the history of contraceptive use among Spanish women over much of the twentieth century. This source is unique because it includes cohorts of women whose reproductive lives took place before, during, and after the baby boom. Traditional contraceptive methods (withdrawal and periodic abstinence) were central to the experience of the first set of women, while the last set made full use of modern as well as some traditional methods. For the first cohorts, traditional methods spearheaded the historic decline in fertility, while among the last set of women modern methods led to a precipitous decline towards the below-replacement fertility that continues in Spain today. There is no evidence that the modest increases in fertility during the baby boom in Spain were the result of a decline in the use of contraception among married women.

Only children (with no full biological siblings) are a growing subgroup in many high-income settings. Previous studies have largely focused on the short-term developmental outcomes of only children, but there is limited evidence on their health outcomes. Using Swedish population register data for cohorts born 1940-75, we compare the health of only children with that of children from multi-child sibling groups, taking into account birth order, family size, and presence of half-siblings. Only children showed lower height and fitness scores, were more likely to be overweight/obese in late adolescence, and experienced higher later-life mortality than those with one or two siblings. However, only children without half-siblings were consistently healthier than those with half-siblings, suggesting that parental disruption confers additional disadvantages. The health disadvantage was attenuated but not fully explained by adjustment for parental characteristics and after using within-family maternal cousin comparison designs.

The Covid-19 pandemic displayed large variations between and within countries in the speed of contagion and in observed fatality rates. This work sheds light on the role of social ties in old age, exploiting the high cultural variation between German-speaking and Latin- (French- and Italian-) speaking regions in Switzerland. We show that older adults in Latin-speaking regions exhibit a larger social network and more intergenerational contacts than their German-speaking counterparts. These differences are consistent with the heterogeneous incidence of the disease across language regions. Even controlling for several determinants of the contagion, we find large differences in the incidence of Covid-19 among older adults, in both the first and second waves of the pandemic. These findings also hold when exploiting language variations within the three Swiss bilingual cantons. We rule out the possibility that our results are driven by differences in canton-specific policies or in citizens' compliance with containment measures.

Research guided by demographic transition theory has shown that exposure to mortality influences women's fertility preferences and behaviours. Despite the myriad contexts, methodological approaches, and linkages featured in past studies, they have shared a focus on women, leaving questions on the gendered salience of mortality exposures for adults' fertility-related outcomes unanswered. In this research note, we analyse data from three African countries with distinct fertility profiles (Nigeria, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to examine associations between sibling mortality exposure and ideal family size among women, men, and couples. We also investigate the stability of these associations over time. The associations between adults' sibling mortality exposure and their own and their spouses' ideal family sizes vary across countries. However, the gendered nature of the results in every country and evidence of cross-spousal effects uniformly demonstrate the need to incorporate sex differences into the study of the mortality-fertility link.