Demography最新文献

We use high-quality panel data on the entire population of Norway to study first-generation immigrants who arrived for labor and out-migrate during our observation period (2000‒2020). We utilize rarely available official information about status-at-arrival and destination-upon-exit to disaggregate immigrants into returnees, onward migrants, and stayers, which enables us to investigate underlying selection mechanisms and offer a better understanding of the sorting of immigrants into different countries and new awareness of the self-selection of stayers. Our findings demonstrate significant selection for all characteristics, which are differentially associated with return and onward migration. Interestingly, women are more migratory than men, while the employed are less likely to out-migrate. Although both the low and high educated are more likely to return and migrate onward, the highest educated exhibit the greatest odds of out-migration. Immigrants with no and higher-than-average earnings are more likely to return and move onward, resulting in a U-shaped effect. It is remarkable that the top earners' emigration is toward either destination, revealing notable differences across egalitarian income distributions. Nordic immigrants are the most likely to return, and other non-Europeans are the most likely to move onward. Our findings remain robust to several tests, however, they do not systematically conform to the predictions of labor migration theories.

In many countries, temporary work (including fixed-term and casual employment contracts) is negatively associated with fertility. Yet, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. This study investigates several mediating pathways (wages, financial satisfaction, short tenure, and subjective job insecurity) through which temporary work influences the transition to first birth in two contrasting contexts: Australia and Germany. Event-history and path models are estimated using 19 years of data from both the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (n  =  28,530) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (n  =  31,608). Results show that casual work among women and men in Australia and fixed-term contracts among women in Germany are associated with a lower likelihood of first birth than permanent employment. Lower wages explain a significant proportion of these differences for both genders. The higher likelihood of being new in a job (in Germany) and higher perceived job insecurity (in Australia) are relevant mediators only among women, whereas the subjective financial situation was not a relevant mediator for any group. These findings suggest that a less favorable objective financial situation plays a crucial role in first-birth postponement by temporary workers, whereas perceived economic and employment uncertainty are not universally associated with first-birth decisions.

Widowhood is a disruptive life event, and in aging societies, increased numbers of individuals are potentially exposed to it. Yet, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the demography of widowhood. Using total population data with information on marital and cohabiting unions, discrete-time event-history analysis, and incidence-based multistate life tables, we analyze lifetime risk of widowhood, mean age at becoming widowed, widowhood expectancy, and variation in years spent widowed, and also document gender and educational differences in these metrics over the last three decades in Finland. Our results show that, over time, individuals are less likely to experience widowhood, and when they do, it occurs at older ages. Compared with men, women have higher widowhood risk and widowhood expectancy (duration) and a lower mean age at widowhood. Widowhood expectancy for women declined from 8 to 6 years between 1988 and 2018, whereas for men it stagnated at around 2 years. Low-educated women faced more widowhood years than the highly educated, while the opposite held for men. In showing decreased risks, delayed onset, and shorter widowhood expectancy, particularly among women, our results suggest that the current older population may experience reduced exposure to the psychosocial and financial challenges of widowhood, with potentially reduced caregiving burden on families and the state.

This study investigated the association between family structure and the onset of substance use by early adolescence (e.g., before age 14) in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, with a focus on the role of selection in this association. Leveraging nationally representative surveys, logistic regression models estimated this association while iteratively controlling for three sets of selection mechanisms and testing for differential robustness to unobserved traits. Results revealed higher substance use rates among early adolescents living with single mothers than among those living with married mothers; early adolescents living with cohabiting mothers fell between these two groups. In general, mothers' family formation histories and, especially, socioemotional adjustment emerged as key confounds attenuating these associations, whereas their socioeconomic histories more often suppressed substance use. Unobserved confounds also appeared to be at work. Such patterns were fairly consistent across countries, but some evidence suggests that single motherhood mattered more to early adolescent substance use (particularly alcohol) and was less selective in terms of observed and unobserved confounds in Australia, the country with the most policy buffers for families and youths facing hardship.

Educational expansion has contributed considerably to increasing life expectancy, but its contribution to lifespan variation trends is unclear. We assessed the contributions of educational expansion and mortality changes by educational group to trends in life expectancy (e30) and lifespan variation (e30†) at age 30 in England and Wales, Finland, and Italy (Turin) in 1975-2015. We applied decomposition analysis to education-specific mortality rates by age and sex derived from individually linked administrative mortality data by country, educational attainment (low, middle, and high), sex, age, and calendar year. Educational expansion contributed simultaneously to increasing e30 and decreasing e30† for all age groups studied. The contribution of educational expansion to the trends in e30 and e30† was higher in Finland, particularly for e30†; it was higher among males than among females in England and Wales and in Italy. Over time, the contribution of the educational expansion to trends in e30 and e30† increased. Mortality changes among the low-educated contributed the most to increases in e30 but counterbalanced selected declines in e30†. Educational expansion thus proved to be an important driver of both longer and more equal lifespans. Our finding suggests that educational expansion will also likely influence future mortality progress.

Although the reversal of gender gaps in education has been studied in industrialized countries, less is known about the implications of this phenomenon for union formation in low- and middle-income contexts, where high gender inequalities are persistent. This article fills this gap by studying the case of Colombia, where female advantages in education grew amid the prevalence of hypergamy norms regarding marriage and low economic returns to women's schooling. In particular, I examine whether the role of women's schooling for union entry and educational assortative mating changed as women gained more schooling across cohorts. To this end, I combine Demographic and Health Surveys and Colombia National Censuses, encompassing cohorts born between 1920 and 1980. My findings show that as gender gaps were reduced, the negative association between women's education and union entry increased among younger cohorts, in contrast to recent trends in high-income contexts. Nevertheless, analyses on marital pairings indicate an increase in educational hypogamy, suggesting changes in traditional patterns of assortative mating. These results advance current understandings of the demographic implications of overturning the gender gap in schooling in contexts of high gender inequality.

The last century witnessed an unprecedented rise in life expectancy; however, in recent decades the "unthinkable" has occurred-life expectancy stagnation, a dramatic drop in the U.S. international life expectancy ranking, rising midlife death rates, and widening socioeconomic and geographic disparities. The "inconceivable" has occurred with the high level of mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, which further exacerbated racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities and highlighted the vulnerabilities of long-term care systems and fragmented health policies. The "unknowable" future of mortality is explored through the lens of emerging work in geroscience based on an integration of biology with studies of aging populations, which offers some promise of potential interventions in the process of aging that underlies chronic disease resulting in mortality at older ages. However, transformative changes in social policy, health equity, behaviors, and legal rights are needed for the United States to improve its current situation. While the integration of biological understanding is likely to point to new avenues for improving population health and life expectancy, without immediate social changes, only a portion of the U.S. population is likely to be able to take advantage of these improvements, and the United States is likely to lag other countries in the level of life expectancy.

Scholars continue to debate the progress of the gender revolution. Some argue that the gender revolution is stalled, whereas others see an emerging second half marked by men's increased involvement in the home. Using longitudinally linked monthly data from the 1989-2020 Current Population Survey, I show that U.S. fathers from more recent cohorts worked fewer hours around the time of a childbirth than earlier cohorts-evidence consistent with the second half of the gender revolution. The magnitude of change is modest but is larger among college-educated men, men with a college-educated partner, and men in dual-earner households. Changes across cohorts are entirely accounted for by men's increasing reports of parental leave usage. Findings shed light on the changing relationship between parenthood and work for men and suggest continued steps toward gender equality.

The relationship between retirement and health is a critical issue in rapidly aging societies. Numerous studies have investigated the effect of retirement on subsequent health, but this research has paid little attention to heterogeneous patterns of retirement. To address this limitation, we examine the relationship between retirement pathways from full-time regular employment and health. Using the 2005-2019 Longitudinal Survey of Middle-aged and Elderly Persons conducted in Japan, the world's oldest country, we first use sequence analysis to identify distinct retirement trajectories at ages 59-66. We then evaluate alternative approaches to estimate relationships between these retirement trajectories and an index measure of self-rated health. Results of ordinary least-squares and inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment models show that both gradual and abrupt retirement are associated with worse health relative to continued regular employment. In contrast, estimates from instrumental variable models are imprecise and provide no clear evidence of a relationship between retirement trajectories and health. Results are generally robust to sensitivity checks. These findings help establish an empirical foundation for understanding the potential implications of heterogeneous retirement pathways for health at older ages in the context of mandatory retirement policies and rapid population aging.