European Journal of Population-Revue Europeenne De Demographie最新文献

Migration research has long been divided between studies of drivers, which focus on the factors shaping migration flows, and studies of patterns, which describe how these flows are organised across space. Theories of migration typically identify and operationalise drivers, but are often less explicit about patterns. As a result, migration theories are usually evaluated using goodness-of-fit measures that assess explanatory power but pay limited attention to spatial accuracy. This article addresses this limitation by introducing a simulation-based procedure to evaluate the spatial accuracy of migration theories. Starting from an observed system of origin-destination migration flows, the procedure generates synthetic systems that reflect the spatial outcomes implied by a given theory. These synthetic migration systems are then compared to the observed case to assess spatial accuracy. The procedure is applied to intra-European migration flows from 2002 to 2021 and illustrated using two long-standing migration theories: the gravity model and migration systems theory. Both theories achieve high explanatory power under conventional goodness-of-fit metrics, and migration systems theory performs better overall. However, the empirical analysis shows that both theories fail to reproduce important spatial features of the European context, including the high level of reciprocity of flows and the observed migration profiles of Eastern and Northern European countries. These findings highlight how strong statistical fit does not imply accurate spatial representation. Evaluating migration theories through their implied spatial outcomes provides new insights into their limitations and offers a complementary and integrative tool for migration research.

This article presents an investigation into the gendered outcomes of inter-regional moves in six European countries, adopting a life-course perspective. Analyses are based on retrospective data from SHARELIFE for birth cohorts from the 1930s to 1960s in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden. Linear probability panel models with fixed effects are used to examine the association between inter-regional migration and employment status over time, while assessing whether it differs by gender and family status. Results show that men experience improved employment probabilities following migration, regardless of their family status, and that these outcomes are consistent across countries. Moreover, the likelihood of employment for men continues to gradually increase several years after the move. In contrast, inter-regional mobility favours single women more than partnered women, especially mothers. Results, however, do not confirm a pattern of continued disadvantages, as mobility does not further reduce the employment prospects of mothers over time. The largest differences in the association between geographical mobility and employment between single women and mothers are observed in Mediterranean countries, while in more egalitarian countries like Sweden these differences are comparatively small.

Countries with low mortality show uneven success in improving longevity. Smoking-still a dominant health risk-is a major determinant of these divergent trajectories. Our study aims to determine: a) the continuing influence of smoking on national mortality trends, and b) the extent to which other factors are preventing countries from realizing their health potential. Using mortality data from 20 low-mortality countries (1950-2019), we quantify life expectancy and age-specific mortality differences as calendar years behind the current longevity frontier, defined as record smoking-eliminated life expectancy. We find that current life expectancy largely reflects smoking-eliminated records from two decades ago, with a notable gender paradox across most countries: men are moving closer to the optimal health benchmarks, while women are drifting further away, although men still bear a greater burden of past smoking. While longevity leaders differ from laggards mainly in mortality at advanced ages, laggards show also extensive developmental delays throughout most of the working ages and the second half of life. Our results highlight the diminishing effect of smoking and the role of additional adverse factors in delayed mortality improvement. However, the positive effects from smoking declines have not yet been fully realized, as evidenced by the still comparatively high reduction in development delays after eliminating smoking. Nevertheless, the realization of further health potential largely depends on countries' ability to manage health in old age, including the increasing burden of chronic disease.

Despite ongoing efforts to reduce health disparities, substantial mortality differences persist across and within European countries. Avoidable mortality, i.e. deaths preventable through timely medical care or effective public health measures, provides a useful framework for assessing these inequalities. While previous studies largely focus on national differences, this study examines spatial differences and trends in avoidable mortality at the district level. We analysed official cause-of-death statistics for 581 districts across 10 European countries from 2002 to 2019, using age-standardised death rates (SDR) as the primary outcome. Spatiotemporal clusters were identified using emerging hotspot analysis. Our results show that SDRs for avoidable mortality declined across most districts for both sexes, yet marked disparities persist between men and women and between amenable and preventable mortality. Districts in Central and Eastern Europe consistently exhibited higher SDRs than those in Western and Southern Europe, while Germany occupies an intermediate position with particularly high rates for amenable mortality. Spatiotemporal hotspot analysis confirmed these patterns and showed that persistent high-mortality (hotspots) and low-mortality (coldspots) clusters persist, reflecting both substantial within-country inequalities and cohesive cross-border mortality patterns. These findings suggest that national boundaries are not always the most meaningful lines for explaining health outcomes. Instead, local socioeconomic and structural determinants of health play a central role. Persistent hotspots highlight areas where targeted interventions are urgently needed, while coldspots may offer lessons for best practices. Addressing these inequalities requires targeted, place-based, and transnational strategies to effectively reduce health inequalities in Europe.

Considerable variation exists across societies in the prevalence of demographic trends associated with the second demographic transition (SDT). We propose that these persistent disparities are, in part, determined by long-standing cultural traits. Employing an epidemiological approach, we proxy the inherited component of five key values-gender egalitarianism, religiosity, institutional distrust, generalized trust, and family ties-from the descendants of immigrants in the United States, and link them to SDT outcomes across 23 countries. Our analysis investigates whether societies pre-exposed to these specific values through intergenerational transmission are more or less likely to exhibit SDT, operationalized here as the share of births outside marriage. Our findings reveal that several of these traits exert a notable influence when interacting with educational expansion. Gender egalitarianism, institutional distrust, and generalized trust exhibit positive associations with non-marital birth rates when coupled with increased education. Meaning that, with the broad educational expansion that has taken place across all Western countries after the IIWW, the SDT spreads much faster in societies where these three inherited values are deeply ingrained. Conversely, family ties demonstrate a negative association, while no strong evidence is found regarding the influence of religiosity. In conclusion, our study underscores the necessity of a nuanced cultural approach to the SDT framework, acknowledging the importance of local values alongside the global ideational shift.