The missing consequences of birth spacing on child outcomes
Short birth intervals are often believed to be detrimental for children. While this may be true in some (poor) settings, and for some birth outcomes (preterm birth and low birth … Read more
Americas
America’s pandemic of the unvaccinated
The politicization of COVID-19 has changed America’s coronavirus pandemic from a serious public health concern into a major political issue and has contributed to vaccine avoidance. With many Americans declining … Read more
The death toll of COVID-19 in Mexico in 2020
The impact of COVID-19 on period life expectancy (LE) in Mexico in 2020 was strong, much stronger, for instance, than that of the 10-year war on drugs. Víctor M. García-Guerrero … Read more
Slower population growth signals successes and benefits
Results from 2020 population censuses for the United States and China made headlines about population collapse, baby busts and demographic decline. Lopsided lamentations have given little attention to the social, … Read more
America’s retirement riddle
With U.S. Social Security Trust Funds projected to be insolvent in 2035, America is again facing its retirement riddle. Congress can address the insolvency by making possible adjustments in three … Read more
The role of non-resident family in migration after separation
Amy Spring, Clara H. Mulder, Michael J. Thomas, Thomas J. Cooke find that the presence of non-resident family plays an important role in separated people’s decisions to migrate within the … Read more
From deprivation to neonatal and post-neonatal mortality in Bolivia
Filippo Temporin identifies three possible mechanisms whereby deprivation can affect neonatal and post-neonatal mortality. Using data from the 2008 Bolivia Demographic and Health Survey, however, he concludes that in a … Read more
U.S. immigrant men’s earning trajectories vary by country of origin
Immigrant men who arrived in the United States in the latter part of the twentieth century experienced varied earning trajectories. Leafia Ye and Michal Engelman show that those who came … Read more
Women’s employment 1996-2016: US vs Europe
Among OECD countries, the United States was once a leader in women’s labor force participation, but is now a laggard. Jennifer Hook and Eunjeong Paek compare trends in American and … Read more
Selecting highly educated immigrants may not significantly raise the average education of the U.S. labor force
In the U.S., adopting a Canadian‐style admissions policy, i.e., explicitly selecting immigrants based on educational attainment,would not significantly improve the educational level of the labor force, and the (unlikely) elimination … Read more
Comparing mortality variability between the United States and peer countries
Compared to other high-income countries, the United States has lower life expectancy and greater age-specific mortality variability, due in part to a higher concentration of deaths at young ages. Justin M. … Read more
Frontline workers in the U.S.: race, ethnicity, and gender
Lily Casura, Ricardo Lowe, Jr., Cristina Martinez, Sarah Serpas, Victoria Castellanos, and Joachim Singelmann examine the sociodemographic characteristics of frontline workers in the United States in terms of race/ethnicity, sex, … Read more
Does information change attitudes toward immigrants?
Alexis Grigorieff, Christopher Roth and Diego Ubfal estimate the effect of providing information about the size and characteristics of the immigrant group on attitudes toward immigrants in the United States.They … Read more
Gender-asymmetric time allocation and divorce. A US-West Germany comparison
Examining couples in both the United States and western Germany, Daniela Bellani and Gøsta Esping-Andersen find lower divorce risks when the division of unpaid work is more balanced. This suggests … Read more
Family planning and child health care: the Peruvian case, 1996-2000
In 1996-2000, for the first time in Peru, surgical contraception was promoted among indigenous women, and sometimes imposed upon them. As Marianna Battaglia and Nina Pallarés show, its overall positive … Read more
Strong family ties moderate the negative effect of family size on children’s education, in Wisconsin (USA)
Recent studies have questioned whether family size negatively affects children’s educational outcomes. Based on information from the extended famil, Ea Blaabæk and Joseph Molitoris find that family size has a … Read more
Explaining disability trends in the United States, 1963-2015
Using the world’s longest running survey of health data, the National Health Interview Survey, Jona Schellekens shows that the decrease in mortality from cardiovascular disease in the US postponed the … Read more
Declines in racial and ethnic disparities in poverty and affluence in the United States, 1959-2015
Racial and ethnic disparities in the relative likelihood of experiencing poverty and affluence in the United States generally narrowed over the 1959 to 2015 period, indicative of moderate steps toward … Read more
Disparities in mortality and marriage create unequal kin safety nets in the USA
Heeju Sohn quantifies the diverging kin networks of adults with low and high socioeconomic status (SES) in the United States. In 2013, high SES adults had about 13 years with … Read more
Homicides in Latin America: a global health challenge
Homicide rates in Latin America are higher than elsewhere in the world, although with considerable variation within the region. In some countries, they are so high that they are significantly … Read more
The impact of transportation infrastructures on growth and development
In developing economies, transportation infrastructures are considered a growth factor. But is this still true when the economy matures? Bishal Kasu and Guangqing Chi answer this question using recent (1970–2010) … Read more
The ultimate inequality: vast mortality disparities across U.S. regions
The ultimate form of health inequality is death. Combining the concepts of region, division, and urban-rural residence in the U.S., Wesley James, Jeralynn Cossman, Julia Wolf highlight variation in mortality … Read more
Fertility preferences and reproductive outcomes in the developing world
The implementation of fertility desires through contraception is imperfect, resulting in unplanned births and induced abortions. The highest unplanned pregnancy rates (over two pregnancies during a woman’s lifetime) are observed … Read more
Female political empowerment decreases mortality in developing countries
Gender equality in political participation may make a difference. Ross Macmillan, Naila Shofia, and Wendy Sigle show that women’s presence in national legislatures above a threshold of around 30 percent … Read more
Disability prevalence among Hispanic immigrants in the US
Disability in old age is known to be greater among Hispanic immigrants than US-born populations. However, little is known about immigrant disability at younger ages. Using ACS data, Mara Getz … Read more
Marriage markets and assortative mating in first marriages and remarriages in the USA
Using data from the American Community Survey 2008-2014, Zhenchao Qian and Daniel T. Lichter show how assortative mating patterns are subject to local marriage market conditions.They also find that previously … Read more
The myth of the sandwich generation in Brazil
Due to rapid and profound demographic changes, population age structure in Brazil has changed sharply in the past few years. Contrary to widespread belief, however, Maria Carolina Tomás, Everton Emanuel … Read more
Older workers in Latin America: better health but shorter working lives
Trends in labour force participation and health status of older adults in Latin America reveal a puzzling pattern: the greatly improved health (and labour) conditions of recent years have translated … Read more
Sexual and reproductive health in Argentina: a right for everyone?
Mortality from sexually transmitted diseases has been declining too slowly and unevenly in Argentina, compromising the right to sexual and reproductive health with equal opportunities. This is confirmed by Eleonora Rojas … Read more
Healthy grandparenthood: how long is it, and how has it changed?
In North America, grandparents live for longer now than in the past, and spend more years in good health, despite being older. However, Rachel Margolis and Laura Wright also find … Read more
How long do older Americans work?
Christian Dudel and Mikko Myrskylä study how the length of working life has developed in the U.S. since the early 1990s. While overall life expectancy has increased, there has been … Read more
Internal migration and spatial de-concentration of population in Latin America
Little is known about the details of migration across the urban hierarchy in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Building on their recent work, Jorge Rodriguez Vignoli and Francisco Rowe … Read more
Age, gender, alcohol, and traffic accidents in Brazil
According to the World Health Organization’s Global Report Status Report on Road Safety 2015, more than 1.2 million people die every year on the roads around the world, most of … Read more
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy … and longer
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy” — so begins one of the most famous American songs, Summertime from the Gershwin brothers’ Porgy and Bess. Is the living really easier in … Read more
Dementia risk on the rise as old-age life expectancy increases
As America’s population ages, the number of Americans with dementia is increasing. Because people with dementia often need help with activities of daily living, the cost of caring for a … Read more
All U.S. states are becoming more racially diverse… for now
Universal patterns or trends are rare in demographic research. Yet we have uncovered one: since 1980, all 50 U.S. states have become more ethnically and racially diverse (Lee et al. 2017).Such … Read more
Smoking inequalities in France and the United States
While public health officials worry about the distressingly high levels of tobacco use across the world, they increasingly recognize that smoking also worsens inequalities in health and life expectancy.Trends in … Read more
Are U.S. whites ‘hunkering down’ in racially-diverse cities and neighborhoods?
America’s new racial diversity has upended conventional empirical approaches to residential segregation based on simple binary notions of the color line: white–black, white–nonwhite, or black–nonblack.Multiculturalism, pluralism, and racial hierarchy are … Read more
Immigrant receptivity and local area unemployment in the U.S.
Recent political events in many countries have made it clear that the receptivity of immigrants by destination area citizens is a contentious issue. Natives in arrival countries have demonstrated both … Read more
Majority to minority: the declining U.S. white population
In this essay we document the demography of the decline of the white population in the United States, a country with a long history of white supremacy.Despite the fact that … Read more
Think race and ethnicity are permanent? Think again
Add something else to the list of things that seem simple but are actually complicated – the way someone reports their race or ethnicity. In a recently-published research article (Liebler … Read more
Too young to wed. Child marriage in Guatemala
In Guatemala, it’s legal for a girl to marry as young as 14 — though many are married far younger than that. The result: Many girls marry men far older … Read more
The demography of Trump’s wall
A major feature of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump was his pledge to build a wall on the southern border of the United States that would stop once and … Read more
The economic and fiscal impact of immigration in the US
More than 40 million people living in the United States were born in other countries, and almost an equal number have at least one foreign-born parent. Together, immigrants and their … Read more
Assimilation and birth outcomes of Hispanics in the US
The immigrant health effect is a well-known public health fact observed in many advanced economies. Immigrants tend to be healthier than natives, though their health advantage erodes over time.In the … Read more
Beyond mothers who father: the study of female headship
More than half of a century has passed since Edith Clark first wrote “My Mother Who Fathered Me” in 1957, a classic study on single motherhood (marriage, sex, and concubinage) … Read more
Growing education-related disparities in length of life in the US
“Time and chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are … Read more
Adolescent fertility in Latin America and the Caribbean
Up until the 1970s, the Latin American and Caribbean region stood out for its high levels of fertility. Decline was rapid in subsequent years, but adolescent fertility in the region … Read more
The changing American age curve of divorce
The incidence of divorce, like the incidence of many other demographic phenomena, varies greatly across the life course. Divorce is most prevalent during young adulthood and relatively infrequent among the … Read more
Lower world population growth? A matter of culture
The demographic transition, i.e., the passage from the ancient to the modern demographic regime of low fertility and low mortality, can be a highly heterogeneous process, and its impact on … Read more
Deaths exceed births in most of Europe, but not in the United States, and not in Texas
Prevalence of natural decrease In the first decade of the 21st century (2000-2009), 58 percent of the 1,391 counties of Europe had more deaths than birthscompared to just 28 percent … Read more
If American women have it so bad, why should India’s women not “not join” the labor force?
If there is one gender issue that has mainstream America rightly roiled up today, it has to do with women and work, or more specifically, women at work. Never-ending reports in … Read more
The United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development
The United Nations Sustainable Development Summit was held in New York on 25-27 September 2015. The 193-member UN General Assembly formally adopted the ambitious agenda “Transforming Our World: 2030 Agenda … Read more
Black-White Mortality Differentials in the United States
In the United States, mortality rates differ across racial and ethnic groups. Although the gap in life expectancy between non-Hispanic blacks and non-Hispanic whites (blacks and whites, hereafter) has been declining, … Read more
Break the Immigration Impasse
AMERICAN citizens are paying 535 people to take care of the legislative needs of the country. We are getting shortchanged. Here’s an example: On June 10, an incumbent congressman in … Read more
The changing meaning of cohabitation in Europe and North America. Signs of convergence?
The diffusion of cohabitation during the last decades is one of the most striking aspects of wider social changes that have taken place throughout the industrialized world. Over time, the meaning … Read more