Health around the time of first birth matters for future fertility

Fertility and reproduction

July 27, 2026

Øystein Kravdal, Emily Grundy, Rannveig Kaldager Hart

Estimating years lived across racial categories in Brazil*

Using multistate life tables techniques, Jerônimo Muniz, Aliya Saperstein, and Bernardo Queiroz estimate that about one out of two Brazilians initially classified as Black will be reclassified as Brown, as ... Read more

Violence begets violence. Evidence from the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970)

Women exposed to war are known to be at higher risk of intimate partner violence, but is this simply because their husbands, too, endured war? Studying the Nigerian Civil War ... Read more

Reproductive life concentrated into ever-shorter windows*

Demographers have long tracked how many children women have and when. But how widely fertility is spread across reproductive ages has received comparatively little attention. Thomas Spoorenberg introduces a simple ... Read more

Can we really predict individual-level longevity?

Disparities in life expectancy across sociodemographic groups are large in the U.S. Still, using linked Census and mortality records for men born in 1910, Casey Breen and Nathan Seltzer find ... Read more

Son preference and reproductive behaviour in Uzbekistan

Using data from the 2021–2022 Uzbekistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, Khilola Dushamova, Rashid Javed, Gayrat Suyunov and Munira Zakirova find that son preference shapes reproductive behaviour among Uzbek women. Women ... Read more

Why menstrual health belongs in population surveys

Population surveys measure health and wellbeing but overlook menstrual cycle status and symptom burden, a blind spot affecting nearly half the population. Drawing on a survey review and qualitative research, ... Read more

Did you know?

In 2024, nearly 78 per cent of women aged 15–49 who wanted to avoid pregnancy used modern contraceptive methods. Despite this progress, more than 250 million women of reproductive age still do not use modern contraception.
Source: United Nations (2024), Estimates and Projections of Family Planning Indicators 2024. Available at: www.un.org/development/desa/pd/ data/family-planning-indicators.
Note: Oceania excludes Australia and New Zealand.

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N-IUSSP is a new IUSSP news magazine, which will disseminate scientific findings from demographic research carried out all over the world. The practical implications of current trends, the risks and potentialities of emerging situations, the pros and cons of specific laws are discussed in rigorous but plain language.

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