Demography最新文献

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.

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 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.

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.

Educational inequality in health has been increasing in the United States. The growth in health inequality has not been limited to specific conditions but has been observed across a wide range of outcomes, including disability, multimorbidity, self-rated health, and mortality. This study used data for adults aged 50-79 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to assess changes in biological aging across education groups over a 25-year period. We found that while biological aging slowed for each education group, educational inequality increased owing to greater improvements among those with the highest education levels. Specifically, biological age differences between adults with 0-11 years of schooling and adults with 16+ years of schooling grew from one year in 1988-1994 to almost two years in 2015-2018. Growing inequality in biological aging was not attenuated by changes in smoking, obesity, or medication use. Overall, these results point to an increasing difference in physiological dysregulation by education among U.S. older adults, which might remain a source of greater and growing inequality in morbidity, disability, and mortality in the near future.

Over the past few decades, the United States has witnessed a gender revolution and transformation in family economic arrangements. However, little research has investigated the intergenerational transmission of earnings arrangements within different-sex couples, even though such knowledge illuminates the mechanisms underlying changes and continuities in the economic organization and gender relations within U.S. families. We use a life course perspective to examine whether and how different-sex couples' earnings arrangements two years after the birth of their first child are shaped by their parents' earnings arrangements across four periods (same life stage, contemporaneous, sensitive period, and cumulative). Two-generational panel data on different-sex couples and their parents are drawn from the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968-2021). Regression models indicate that women tend to contribute more earnings if their male partner's mother contributed a larger share to the family income either during the same life stage (two years after her first birth) or over the life course of the male partner. No similar patterns emerge for the earnings arrangements of the female partner's parents. This two-generational life course study underscores the importance of couples' social origins and reveals the social (re)production of family economic arrangements and its gendered nature.

Understanding the circumstances in which children migrate is important to ensure their well-being. Yet, child migration in sub-Saharan Africa is not easy to measure. Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) provide an excellent opportunity to estimate child migration in the region. I examine out-migration patterns of children younger than 15 in eastern and southern Africa, where adult mortality is high, fostering is prevalent, and households are dynamic. Using longitudinal data pooled from 15 HDSS, covering roughly 451,000 children, I find that most children who migrate do so with their mothers (tied migration). Moreover, an intergenerational link between a mother's and her child's mobility is evident: children whose mothers are migrants are more likely to migrate themselves. Despite some expectations of agency in child mobility in later childhood (for education or work), children who out-migrate independently of their mothers are often orphaned or have mothers living elsewhere. Maternal death is a forceful driver of child migration, especially within six months following a mother's death. Thus, orphaned migrants are exposed to the double shock of losing a parent and a change in their immediate environment. However, children in larger households tend to migrate less, somewhat dampening the mobility of orphans.