Demography最新文献

This article investigates the factors that contributed to the proliferation of online COVID skepticism on Twitter across Italian municipalities in 2020. We demonstrate that sociodemographic factors were likely to mitigate the emergence of skepticism, whereas populist political leanings were more likely to foster it. Furthermore, pre-COVID anti-vaccine sentiment, represented by "old truthers" on Twitter, amplified online COVID skepticism in local communities. Additionally, exploiting the spatial variation in restrictive economic policies with severe implications for suspended workers in nonessential economic sectors, we find that COVID skepticism spreads more in municipalities significantly affected by the economic lockdown. Finally, the diffusion of COVID skepticism is positively associated with COVID vaccine hesitancy.

The sibling correlation (SC), which estimates the total effect of family background (i.e., social origins), can be interpreted as measuring a society's inequality of opportunity. Its sensitivity to observed and unobserved factors makes the SC an all-encompassing measure and an attractive choice for comparative research. We gather and summarize all available estimates of SCs in educational attainment (M = .46, SD = .09) and employ meta-regression to explore variability in these estimates. First, we find significantly lower SCs in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark than in the United States, with U.S. correlations roughly .10 (i.e., 25%) higher. Most other (primarily European) countries in our study are estimated to fall in between these countries and the United States. Second, we find a novel Great Gatsby Curve-type positive association between income inequality in childhood and the SC, both cross-nationally and within countries over time. This finding supports theoretical accounts of the Great Gatsby Curve that emphasize the role of educational inequality as a link between economic inequality and social immobility. It implies that greater equality of educational opportunity likely requires reduced economic inequality. Additionally, correlations between sisters are modestly higher, on average, than those between brothers or all siblings, and we find no overall differences between cohorts.

Despite recent economic growth and reductions in child mortality in many African countries, the region has experienced a slow fertility transition. In this study, we explore whether the slow structural economic change on the continent can explain this discrepancy. We construct a unique panel dataset combining Demographic and Health Surveys and nighttime light intensity data (an indicator of industrialization) from 57 countries at the subnational region level over three decades to analyze the drivers of fertility transitions across low- and middle-income countries. Our results confirm that household wealth, reduced child mortality, and female primary education are crucial for fertility declines. However, our analysis also highlights the importance of indicators of structural economic change, including the share of labor in nonagricultural occupations, industrialization, the share of women with higher education, and the formalization of the economy. Our simulations suggest that if high-fertility countries in sub-Saharan Africa underwent structural economic transformations comparable to those of other low- and middle-income countries with low fertility rates, their fertility levels could fall by 1 to 1.6 children.

The use of data derived from electronic health records (EHRs) to describe racial and ethnic health disparities is increasingly common, but there are challenges. While the number of patients covered by EHRs can be quite large, such patients may not be representative of a source population. One way to evaluate the extent of this limitation is by linking EHRs to an external source, in this case with the American Community Survey (ACS). Relying on a stratified random sample of about 200,000 patient records from a large, public, integrated health delivery system in North Carolina (2016-2019), we assess linkages to restricted ACS microdata (2001-2017) by race and ethnicity to understand the strengths and weaknesses of EHR-derived data for describing disparities. The results in this research note suggest that Black-White comparisons will benefit from standard adjustments (e.g., weighting procedures) but that misestimation of health disparities may arise for Hispanic patients because of differential coverage rates for this group.

While parity is a significant factor influencing parental health, its relationship with dementia remains underexplored. This research note advances the literature by conducting a well-powered analysis of associations between parity (i.e., number of children) and Alzheimer's disease and dementias (AD/D) status in large-scale population data. The data contain a large number of AD/D cases (37,228 women and 19,846 men), allowing a range (1-10) of parity associations to be estimated precisely. Using proxy (adult child's) reports of parental AD/D status, we find that both fathers and mothers with grand multiparity have decreased odds of AD/D status, and the effect sizes become larger as parity increases, with 30-40% reduction in AD/D status at parities above 7. The association is stronger for mothers than for fathers. This finding differs from much of the prior literature and likely suggests the impact of parity, as one of the important life course contexts, on people's cognitive function and risk of having AD/D. Finally, we include population projections that consider how large changes in parity distributions over time may contribute to small elevations in AD/D rates.

Strong expectations exist for the selectivity of migration along key demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, and education, which are often linked to social and economic drivers. Scholars acknowledge, however, that migratory behavior is also likely to be selective on characteristics that are less readily observable. This research note expands the list by examining "grit"-in other words, a measure of perseverance in the face of adversity. We test for a relationship between South African rural-urban migration, net of other standard covariates, and an established composite psychosocial measure of grit. We draw on two waves of survey data originating from a demographic surveillance platform but with respondents followed irrespective of their subsequent geographic mobility. Simple bivariate regressions suggest that grit is strongly associated with migration. Using multivariate models, we continue to detect a statistically significant association of migration with grit in the presence of controls. When the model is further refined to stratify by sex and separate geographic destinations, a sex differential emerges, with grit being more predictive for females. We conclude by suggesting that such findings should encourage broader inquiries that consider grit and other psychological characteristics, particularly investigations that might help further illuminate differentials by the experience of gender.

Drawing on more than 30 years of nationally representative microdata from the General Social Survey, this article comprehensively updates recent trends in ideal family size in the United States. It first documents stability in ideal family sizes between the mid-1980s and 2018, even in the face of a recent fertility decline. Next, the study adopts a latent class approach that identifies typologies of "reproductive orientations," defined as multidimensional mental models of reproduction encompassing ideal family size, attitudes toward reproductive labor, and views on reproduction contexts. The findings indicate three distinct classes of reproductive orientations: Progressive Familialists, Conservative Familialists, and Blended Egalitarians. Further analyses suggest that the prevalence of these classes has changed over time and that class membership is associated with distinct patterns of childbearing and marriage. These findings deepen contemporary understandings of ideal family size in the United States and have broader implications for how demographers conceptualize and measure fertility preferences across diverse contexts.

We conduct a randomized controlled trial that provides pregnant and immediate postpartum women with improved access to family planning through counseling, free transportation to a clinic, and financial reimbursement for family planning services over two years. We study the effects of our intervention on child growth and development outcomes among 1,034 children born to participating women directly before the intervention rollout. We find that children born to mothers assigned to the family planning intervention arm were 0.28-0.34 standard deviations taller for their age and 10.7-12.0 percentage points less likely to be stunted within a year of exposure to the intervention. Children born to mothers assigned to the intervention arm also scored 0.17-0.20 standard deviations higher on a caregiver-reported measure of cognitive development after two years of intervention exposure. Although the nonmeasurement of children is a challenge in our study, our estimates are robust to multiple methods of correcting for potential attrition bias. Our results are consistent with models of fertility that link couples' fertility decisions to child health and human capital. Our results also suggest that improved access to family planning might have positive downstream effects on child health beyond contraceptive use and fertility outcomes.

This article provides a first synthesis of population flows and labor market dynamics across immigrant and native-born populations. We devise a novel dynamic accounting methodology that integrates population flows from two sources-changes in birth cohort size and immigrant flows-with labor market dynamics. We illustrate the method using data for the United Kingdom, where population flows have been large and cyclical, driven first by the maturation of baby boom cohorts in the 1980s and later by immigration in the 2000s. New measures of labor market flows by migrant status uncover the flow origins of disparities in the levels and cyclicality of immigrant and native labor market outcomes and their more recent convergence. An application of our accounting framework reveals that population flows have played a nontrivial role in the volatility of labor markets among the UK-born and, especially, immigrants.

Multiple births strain mothers' and families' resources in ways that should highlight preferences for family size, birth spacing, and parity-dependent stopping behavior. Couples with surviving twins reach their target family size sooner than other couples and should be more likely to practice family limitation. Twins are also a greater burden on the mother's time and health, which could lead to postponing the next birth, even among couples who want additional children. We examine these hypotheses by analyzing families with twins in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Censuses. Using reconstructed birth histories for more than 7 million women in the IPUMS full-count 1900 and 1910 datasets and event-history methods (Kaplan-Meier curves, cure models), we find clear evidence of family limitation following a multiple birth. Couples who had twins or triplets were more likely to stop childbearing, and those who continued having children delayed their next birth. Responses to multiple births were larger in groups previously identified as leaders in the transition to smaller families, and roughly one third of couples stopped after one or two children. We find no evidence that some groups relied primarily on birth spacing to reduce family size while others relied primarily on stopping.