An average woman worldwide now has fewer than half as many children as in 1950 (Bloom et al. 2025). This sharp decline in fertility rates has attracted much recent attention from researchers and policymakers as well as the general public. In many low and middle-income countries, where robust birth registry systems are not always available, these fertility estimates come from demographic survey data. These surveys typically interview “eligible women”, usually ever-married women aged 15 to 49 years in a randomly selected sample of households, and ask them to report all live births. These data are then statistically extrapolated to estimate birth rates for the broader population.

Fertility rates and errors of omission 

The accuracy of these estimates depends on whether respondents provide complete birth histories. However, several factors can lead to omitted births. Birth-history questions are often just one component of a long questionnaire that includes many other topics. Depending on where the question appears, respondents may become tired and skip reporting some births. This may be especially true in low- and middle-income countries where women have a relatively higher average number of children than women in higher-income countries. 

Respondents may also misinterpret the birth history question. For example, rather than reporting all live births, the respondent may think she only needs to report children who are still alive. Or she may feel that she needs to report only children who live with her currently, thus omitting daughters who have married and moved away.

Questions about deceased children can be emotionally sensitive. Some mothers may have suppressed those painful memories, and even if they remember, they may not want to relive them by talking about them.

Collecting birth histories, therefore, is more complex than meets the eye. It also takes a well-trained interviewer who understands the intent of the birth history questions, administers them carefully, and is attentive enough to probe the respondent when needed. 

Estimating omitted births: the role of sex and survival status

Given these issues, in a recent article we estimated the proportion of missing births and the factors associated with those omissions (Sharma et al., 2024). We used data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS). The IHDS is a large-scale panel survey that follows the same households over time, allowing us to compare births reported by the same respondent across two waves. 

We tracked births reported by the same 25,474 women in the first and second survey waves, conducted in 2004–2005 and 2011–2012, respectively. Ideally, all 73,408 births reported in the first wave should also have been reported in the second wave. But this was not the case. We found that 2,913 births (4% of births reported in wave 1) were not reported in wave 2. Moreover, these were not random omissions; they followed a clear pattern, as shown in Figure 1. 

Figure 1: Survival status and sex of children reported in wave 1 (2004–2005) but not reported in wave 2 (2011–2012) of the India Human Development Survey

Percentages add up to 100%. Base: 2,913 births reported in wave 1 but not in wave 2.
Source: Sharma et al. (2024).

Approximately three-quarters of all omitted births were children reported as dead (solid areas in Figure 1) in wave 1, with male and female children contributing almost equally to the omissions. However, among the 27% of children who were reported alive in wave 1 (horizontal-line areas in Figure 1), girls were disproportionately more likely to be missing in wave 2.

Looking at these data from another angle, Table 1 shows the stark contrast in omission rates by children’s survival status recorded in wave 1. Nearly one-third of children reported as deceased in wave 1 were not reported in wave 2. In contrast, only a little more than 1% of children reported alive in wave 1 were omitted in wave 2.

Table 1: Births omitted in wave 2, by the child’s survival status recorded in wave 1 (India, 2004–2005 and 2011–2012)

Source: Sharma et al. (2024).

What are the probable factors behind births omissions? 

Figure 1 and Table 1 clearly show that mothers are much more likely to omit dead children. This is understandable, given the emotional sensitivity of these memories and the difficulty of asking and answering questions about deceased children.

To explore other factors associated with omitted births, we analyzed relationships between omissions and several geographic, maternal, child, and interviewer-level characteristics. Table 2 displays an excerpt of the results from this analysis, conducted separately for omissions among children who had died and children who were alive. What emerges is that birth omissions are a complex function of several survey variables.

Table 2: Relationship of different characteristics with birth omissions, analyzed separately for deceased and alive children 

Notes: ‒ : no evidence of an association of the variable with birth omission or no clear story.
°:  Child’s age for dead children is the purported child age at the time of interview.
Source: Sharma et al. (2024).

What can we do

Birth omissions are large enough to matter. Given the importance of fertility estimates to public debate and policy making, it is critical to ensure that demographic surveys collect accurate birth history data. 

Our analysis shows that birth omissions do not occur at random. This is, in fact, good news: if we can identify which births are most likely to be omitted, we can improve how fertility data are collected. For example, since we know that dead children have an elevated risk of omission (especially in urban areas), interviewers should be trained to administer these questions with care, to be aware of cues that suggest that the respondent is hesitant, and then probe such respondents sensitively. With the availability of Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI), survey instruments can be programmed to dynamically alert interviewers to those combinations of characteristics that are prone to omissions. 

Respondents need to be reminded that the survey is collecting data on all live births and not only on the children who are currently living with her. The data also show that interviewers with a higher workload tend to have lower omissions, both for alive and dead children. Whether this is because IHDS recruited better interviewers as the survey proceeded or because interviewers became better at collecting fertility data as they gained survey experience is a topic of future research.

References

Bloom, D.E., Kuhn, M., Prettner, K. (2025). The Debate over Falling Fertility. Finance & Development Magazine, June 2025, International Monetary Fund,  Washington, DC, USA. Accessed at: https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2025/06/the-debate-over-falling-fertility-david-bloom 

Sharma, S., Desai, S., Barik, D., & Sharma, O. P. (2024). Gone and forgotten? Predictors of birth history omissions in India. Demographic Research, 50, 929.

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Doctoral training now coincides more than ever with women’s prime reproductive years.  In the United States in 1992, the median age at PhD completion was 36 for women and 33 for men. By 2022, both had converged to around 32. This convergence is a sign of progress, but it comes with an underappreciated cost: doctoral training now falls squarely within women’s prime reproductive years. Across many countries, the same window in which researchers are expected to publish, network, and build their reputations is also the window in which family formation typically occurs. For decades, the conventional wisdom told women to delay childbearing until after tenure (Mason, Wolfinger, and Goulden, 2013). 

In a recent study (Zhao et al., 2026), we used a global survey of 8,097 academic parents, linked to their actual publication records over time, to reconstruct how researchers juggle doctoral training and parenthood. Our results reveal striking gender asymmetries that begin during doctoral training and continue throughout academic careers.

Five paths, unequally distributed

In the study, we identified five distinct life-course trajectories based on the timing and sequencing of PhD completion and first parenthood. The most common one, followed by 28% of the sample, was completing the PhD early (before 30) but delaying parenthood until after 35. This pattern is particularly common among women born after 1970, consistent with a broader trend of later family formation among highly educated women.

Men, by contrast, were significantly more likely to fall into the trajectory involving early parenthood alongside doctoral training, becoming fathers before age 30 while also completing a PhD, and tending to have larger families. This trajectory was the smallest in the sample (under 10%) but showed the sharpest gender imbalance, and that imbalance has widened over successive birth cohorts.

The share of publishing researchers without a doctorate by age 40, a trajectory strongly associated with women, has declined dramatically over time, reflecting real progress in closing the doctoral gender gap. But progress at the entry level has not translated into equality in outcomes.

Parenthood penalises mothers, not fathers: what can institutions do?

The consequences of these different life-course trajectories become clear when we examine doctoral completion. Figure 1 shows the probability of completing a PhD by age according to gender and the number of children before PhD completion. Among researchers without children, women and men completed PhDs at almost identical rates. Researchers who had children before completing their PhD were substantially less likely to earn a doctorate than those without children, with women experiencing consistently larger disadvantages than men with the same number of children. The divergence between women’s and men’s PhD completion trajectories grew larger as the number of children increased. 

The timing of parenthood also shapes long-term scientific impact. Women’s citation impact declined progressively as parenthood occurred earlier in their careers. Those who had their first child before age 30 experienced the largest citation disadvantage relative to men, whereas women who delayed parenthood until after age 35 achieved citation impact comparable to their male peers.  Men showed no comparable pattern regardless of when they became fathers; their scientific impact remained largely unchanged. This mirrors what Morgan et al. (2021) described as a “fatherhood premium” in academia: becoming a parent tends to support men’s upward career trajectories while constraining women’s.

The same pattern is evident in career retention. Men were consistently more likely than women to remain in academic positions across all five identified trajectories, with the largest gender differences (7–9 percentage points) among those who completed their PhD early and became parents thereafter.

These findings challenge explanations of women’s underrepresentation in science that focus on ability or preferences. Among researchers without children, there is little evidence of a gender gap. The gap emerges and widens when caregiving responsibilities collide with the demands of doctoral training and early academic careers.

The implications are structural rather than prescriptive. Parental leave for PhD students remains inconsistently available and poorly formalised at many universities. Tenure and fellowship clocks rarely account for caregiving-related disruptions. Evaluation criteria implicitly reward uninterrupted productivity, disadvantaging those who take career breaks. Nordic countries offer a useful benchmark: their more generous leave provisions are associated with less severe career interruptions, though generous leave alone does not neutralise the pressure to maintain continuous output. The deeper issue is not that women make the wrong choice about when to have children, but that the academic timeline itself forces a choice in the first place.

Changing that requires more than isolated accommodations. Childcare provision for doctoral students, structured mentoring for parenting researchers, re-entry funding after career breaks, and reforms to how research performance is evaluated are not simply matters of fairness; they are also matters of scientific efficiency: the persistent loss of talented researchers at the doctoral stage represents a cost to the research enterprise as a whole.

References 

Mason, M. A., Wolfinger, N. H., and Goulden, M. (2013). Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower. Rutgers University Press.

Morgan, A. C., Way, S. F., Hoefer, M. J. D., Larremore, D. B., Galesic, M., and Clauset, A. (2021). The unequal impact of parenthood in academia. Science Advances, 7(9). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abd1996

Zhao, X., Derrick, G. E., Sugimoto, C. R., & Larivière, V. (2026). Starting a PhD and becoming a parent: Gendered life-course trajectories in academic careers. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-026-01668-4

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In many parts of the globe, having a child as an unmarried woman comes with a host of social and economic challenges, and can affect the timing and the quality of a woman’s eventual marriage (Smith-Greenaway and Clark 2018; Smith-Greenaway, Koski, and Clark 2021). Despite focusing on high-mortality contexts, like contemporary Africa, research on this question often makes a rather heroic assumption: that the out-of-wedlock child survives. In reality, however, child mortality remains high in Africa (Smith-Greenaway et al. 2021), and children born outside marriage are especially vulnerable to premature death (Clark and Hamplová 2013). 

What happens when an unwed mother’s child dies?  

This raises the question of whether a child’s survival alters unmarried mothers’ lives, including their eventual entry into marriage. How does the death of a premaritally born child affect the mother’s future marital outcomes? Does the child’s death deepen any observed disadvantage or can it “remove” the stigmatizing status of single motherhood, and improve her chances of marrying? Alternatively, given the high frequency of child fostering in Africa (Cotton 2021), are unwed mothers’ life trajectories unaffected by the loss of a child? 

In a recent paper, we tested these competing hypotheses by examining unmarried mothers’ subsequent marital trajectories after a first birth as a function of their child’s survival (Lin et al. 2025). We used the most recent round of Demographic and Health Surveys, collected between 2011 and 2023, spanning 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, 17% of women of reproductive age (15–49) across these countries experienced a premarital birth, yielding a study sample of 69,800 women. Among them, 3% experienced the death of their firstborn during infancy, allowing us to assess how marital timing and union quality differ between women whose premaritally born child died and those whose child survived. 

Premarital child loss and mothers’ marital outcomes 

Unwed mothers whose first child died during infancy marry sooner relative to their unmarried counterparts whose first child survived (Figure 1). This pattern persists after controlling for mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics, including education. However, these analyses offer no qualitative distinctions as to the nature of these women’s marital unions , a topic that has been largely overlooked in the literature. 

Closer scrutiny reveals that following their child’s death, women tend to marry partners with 0.3 fewer years of schooling, are 16% more likely to enter polygynous unions, and 26% more likely to experience domestic violence. 

As child mortality declines, do these patterns change? 

While the broader question concerns women’s marital trajectories following child loss, a natural follow-up is whether these patterns persist as deaths, including child deaths, become rarer over time. 

In our main analyses, we focused on all reproductive-age women in the Demographic and Health Surveys. These include women born in different cohorts who have navigated romantic relationships, childbearing, and marriage under distinct circumstances. As such, we analyzed whether our findings varied across birth cohorts—including women born in the 1970s (or earlier), 1980s, or 1990s (or later).  

We found that inequalities in both marital timing and quality between unmarried mothers by children’s vital status are largest for the youngest cohort in our data, the cohort with the lowest rates of child mortality. Specifically, experiencing an infant death is associated with substantially faster entry into marriage among women born in or after the 1990s, compared to those born in or before the 1980s (Figure 2). Moreover, the spousal educational gap between mothers whose child died versus survived is considerably larger among women born in the 1980s and 1990s than among those born in or before the 1970s.

This suggests that the death of a firstborn child before marriage has become more consequential for women’s subsequent marriage outcomes, with respect to both marriage timing and quality, despite secular decreases in child mortality.

Final remarks 

Our work demonstrates that a child’s death is not only an outcome of inequality but may also be a future source of disadvantage. Future research should examine more closely how child loss reshapes women’s life trajectories and highlights the unique double burden of unwed mothers who may not only bear a child outside marriage but also, in some cases, lose that child. Although child mortality has been declining in Africa, our findings suggest that it is becoming a more consequential event for women, attesting to the need to further understand the impact of child loss on women’s lives and wellbeing. 

References 

Clark, Shelley, and Dana Hamplová. 2013. “Single Motherhood and Child Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Life Course Perspective.” Demography 50 (5): 1521–1549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-013-0220-6. 

Cotton, Cassandra. 2021. “An Enduring Institution? Child Fostering in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Population and Development Review 47 (4): 1179–1206. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12439. 

Lin, Yingyi, Emily Smith-Greenaway, Camila Cortes Rodriguez, and Shelley Clark. 2025. “From Birth to Death: The Marital Consequences of Child Loss for Unmarried Mothers.” Studies in Family Planning. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.70041 

Smith-Greenaway, Emily, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Jenny Trinitapoli, and Emilio Zagheni. 2021. “Global Burden of Maternal Bereavement: Indicators of the Cumulative Prevalence of Child Loss.” BMJ Global Health 6: e004837. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004837. 

Smith-Greenaway, Emily, and Shelley Clark. 2018. “Women’s Marriage Behavior following a Premarital Birth in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 80(1): 256–270. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12433.

Smith-Greenaway, Emily, Alissa Koski, and Shelley Clark. 2021. “Women’s Marital Experiences Following Premarital Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Marriage and Family 83 (2): 394–408. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12704.

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Son preference is well documented across South and East Asia. However, the Central Asian region has received far less scholarly attention. Central Asian societies are largely patriarchal and patrilineal, with men often viewed as symbols of family continuity. Uzbekistan’s sex ratio at birth, 108 boys per 100 girls, i.e. well above the natural level of around 105, is the highest in the region and comparable to that of India, where son preference has been extensively studied. 

Country context

Uzbekistan is a double-landlocked nation, and, with it 24 million inhabitants, the most populous country in Central Asia. Historically, it has been the intersection of many civilizations and empires, including the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great’s empire, the Mongol Empire, and the Timurid Empire. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Uzbekistan was part of the Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union, whose collapse, in 1990, paved the way for its independence. Since then, Uzbekistan has experienced substantial economic, demographic, and social change, transforming itself from a low-income to a middle-income country. 

Uzbekistan is a patriarchal and patrilineal society, where family lineage and inheritance are traditionally passed through the male line. Although recent legal reforms have promoted gender equality, deeply rooted customs continue to influence family dynamics. In Uzbek culture, sons are traditionally viewed as lifelong pillars of the family, responsible for carrying on the family name, inheriting property, and caring for aging parents. This cultural norm is reflected in this Uzbek proverb: O‘g‘il – tayanch, qiz – mehmon (A son is a support, a daughter is a guest). 

Son preference and fertility

In a recent study (Dushamova et al., 2026), we used data from the recent round of Uzbekistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS, 2021–2022) to examine whether son preference influences the likelihood of having another child and the duration of the subsequent birth intervals. To this end we separately considered the effect of three independent variables: 

1) Sex of the latest child

2) Presence of at least one son, and

3) Number of sons. 

The main results we obtained are displayed in Figure 1.

The sex of the firstborn child, male or female, plays no role in women’s decisions about having additional children (Figure 1). However, from the second birth onwards, a clear pattern emerges: if the second-born child is male, women are up to 10% less likely to have a third birth. The effect becomes more pronounced when considering whether a woman has at least one son at a given birth order. After two children, women with at least one son are up to 16.7% less likely to proceed to a third birth. By the third and fourth birth orders, this gap widens to between 32% and 36%. The number of sons further reinforces this pattern. After the fourth birth, women with one, two, three, or four sons are 28.6% to 38.5% less likely to have a fifth birth compared to those whose first four children are female. 

We also found a significant association between son preference and subsequent birth intervals. After the first birth, women with a firstborn son have a 14% longer subsequent birth interval. Similarly, having a male second-born child is associated with a 23% longer interval before the next birth. The effect is more pronounced when considering whether a woman has at least one son at a given birth order. Having at least one son is associated with a 35% longer interval between the second and third birth, and a 28% longer interval between the third and fourth. Women with a son are also significantly less likely to conceive within 24 months of a previous birth, or within the shorter and riskier thresholds of 15 or 18 months.

Son preference also shapes family planning. Women with at least one son are around 9 percentage points more likely to use contraceptives, suggesting that once a son is born, women actively take steps to limit further childbearing.

The stopping effect is stronger in rural areas, and results are broadly similar across income groups. These findings hold when the analysis is restricted to women aged 40 and above.

Our findings are comparable with other studies on Asian countries (Hoq, 2019; Hoque & Boulier, 2020; Javed & Mughal, 2020, 2022; Jiang et al., 2016; Robitaille & Milla, 2022; Zaidi & Morgan, 2016), and, in particular, align with those of a recent study on Uzbekistan’s neighboring country, Kyrgyzstan (Kazenin, 2023).

Summing up

Our research provides what we believe is the first evidence of son preference in Uzbekistan in terms of fertility behaviour, rather than sex ratio at birth, and the results that we obtain, not surprisingly, point in the same direction: son preference is a reality.

Despite progress in recent years, much remains to be done: the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which focuses on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, has not yet been reached in Uzbekistan.

References

Dushamova, K., Javed, R., Suyunov, G., & Zakirova, M. (2026). A Tale of Two Choices : Son Preference and Reproductive Outcomes in Uzbekistan. Review of Development Economics, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.70152

Hoq, M. N. (2019). Effects of son preference on fertility: A parity progression analysis. Corvinus Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 10(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.14267/CJSSP.2019.1.2

Hoque, N., & Boulier, B. L. (2020). Hi-tech Sexism? Evidence from Bangladesh. B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, 20(3), 61–98. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2019-0269

Javed, R., & Mughal, M. (2020). Preference for boys and length of birth intervals in Pakistan. Research in Economics, 74(2), 140–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rie.2020.04.001

Javed, R., & Mughal, M. (2022). Changing patterns of son preference and fertility in Pakistan. Journal of International Development, 34(6), 1086–1109. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3618

Jiang, Q., Li, Y., & Sánchez-Barricarte, J. J. (2016). Fertility Intention, Son Preference, and Second Childbirth: Survey Findings from Shaanxi Province of China. Social Indicators Research, 125(3), 935–953. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-0875-z

Kazenin, K. (2023). Son preference, gender asymmetries and parity progressions: the case of Kyrgyzstan. Asian Population Studies, 19(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441730.2021.1992858

Robitaille, M., & Milla, J. (2022). Son Targeting Fertility Behavior in Albania, IZA Discussion Paper,  Issue 15122.

Zaidi, B., & Morgan, S. P. (2016). In the Pursuit of Sons: Additional Births or Sex-Selective Abortion in Pakistan? Population and Development Review, 42(4), 693–710. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12002

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In a 2025 N-IUSSP article, I showed that working mothers in Belgium who use formal childcare for their first child are more likely to have a second. While part of this link reflected differences in who manages to secure a childcare place, the experience of using childcare itself seemed to matter: it presumably helps mothers reconcile work and family life and makes the prospect of another child more manageable. But Belgium is just one case, and a relatively supportive one when it comes to childcare provision. This raises an important question: does the same relationship hold across Europe? Or does the link between childcare use and continued childbearing depend on national context?

In a new study (Wood 2025), I examine this question using comparable survey data from ten European countries. The results show that the answer is far from uniform. In some countries, using formal childcare is associated with a higher likelihood of having another child. In others, the association is negative. This cross-national variation suggests that formal childcare uptake can support continued fertility, but only under certain conditions.

Why childcare use might matter for fertility

Formal childcare is often seen as a key policy lever because it helps parents, especially mothers, remain in paid work by reducing the time and energy required for caregiving. At the macro level, countries with more extensive childcare systems tend to have higher fertility, yet research has repeatedly shown that the direct impact of family policies on birth rates is often modest, particularly in low-fertility settings. As Gauthier and Gietel-Basten (2025) state, this implies that explicitly pronatalist policies can easily become “hostages to fortune” if evaluated solely on their ability to raise birth rates. 

To date, little is known about whether individual parents who actually use formal childcare are more likely to have another child (Wood, 2025; Neyer and Andersson, 2008). The study presented here does not focus on explaining aggregate fertility trends, but on the possible individual-level life course link between formal childcare uptake and continued childbearing, to better understand how work, family, and policy interact in parents’ everyday lives.

From a life-course perspective, there are good reasons to expect such a link. Parents who have already used formal childcare may anticipate lower opportunity costs of another birth, feel less dependent on informal care, and experience less stress in combining work and family life. Using childcare may also shift norms, making the dual-earner, two-child family model feel more achievable. At the same time, childcare users are a selective group. They tend to be more educated, more strongly attached to the labour market, and more economically secure, and these are factors that also influence fertility decisions.

Studying ten countries with comparable data

To move beyond single-country studies, I used data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), a large cross-national panel survey. The analysis covers ten European countries: Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia.

I focused on working parents with at least one child and examined whether those who used formal childcare were more or less likely to have another child in the following years. To account for the fact that childcare users differ systematically from non-users, I combined propensity score matching with hazard models, allowing a more credible comparison between similar parents who did and did not use childcare. It should be noted that, in such a selection-on-observables strategy, remaining bias in the estimates might occur due to the omission of confounders form the matching criteria (Kreyenfeld, 2021).

Positive links in some countries, negative in others

The main finding is clear: the association between childcare use and subsequent childbearing varies strongly across countries. In five countries (France, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, and Hungary) formal childcare use among working parents is associated with a higher likelihood of having another child (Figure 1). These are also countries where childcare use is relatively common in the GGS data, suggesting that childcare is more accessible, socially accepted, or easier to integrate into everyday life. 

In contrast, Georgia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, and Austria show predominantly negative associations (Figure 2). In these contexts, parents who use formal childcare are less likely to have another child than similar parents who do not. 

One potential explanation for such cross-national variation lies in how widespread and normalized formal childcare is. In contexts where many working parents use childcare, doing so may reduce stress, reinforce norms of work–family compatibility, and create a supportive environment for having another child. In such settings, childcare use may genuinely ease the path to continued childbearing. In countries where formal childcare is less common, using it may be more strongly associated with career-oriented parents who prioritize employment continuity. For these parents, childcare might facilitate deeper labour market attachment, which could in turn make additional childbearing more difficult later on. In such cases, a potential positive effect of childcare may be offset, or even reversed, by career dynamics.

Looking ahead

The results suggest that childcare policies matter not only in terms of availability, but also in how they shape parents’ everyday experiences. We speculate that if childcare is affordable, flexible, high-quality, and widely used, it can help parents feel that work and family life are compatible, and support continued childbearing. The same policy instrument may not have the same effect, however, if access is limited, socially contested, or tied to demanding work trajectories.

This study is one of the first to examine the link between formal childcare use and subsequent childbearing across a diverse set of European countries using comparable data. At the same time, it raises new questions. Future research should explore how specific design features (such as cost, opening hours, quality, and flexibility) shape the fertility effects of childcare uptake at the individual level. More recent data are also needed to assess whether these patterns have changed as childcare systems have continued to expand. What is clear, however, is that formal childcare is not a uniform fertility policy tool. Its effects depend on context, which could point to variation in policy design, norms, and lived experience. 

References

Gauthier AH and Gietel-Basten S. (2025) Family Policies in Low Fertility Countries: Evidence and Reflections. Population and Development Review 51: 125-161.

Kreyenfeld M. (2021) Causal Modelling in Fertility Research: A Review of the Literature and an Application to a Parental Leave Policy Reform. Comparative Population Studies 46.

Neyer G and Andersson G. (2008) Consequences of Family Policies on Childbearing Behavior: Effects or Artifacts? Population and Development Review 34: 699-724.

Wood J. (2025) Does Formal Childcare Uptake Stimulate Fertility? Formal Childcare Usage and Second Births. Population Research and Policy Review 44: 42.

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Marriage isn’t a guarantee of a “happily ever after,” even for older adults who have been married for decades. Rates of “gray divorce” – or divorce among people aged 50 and older – have risen dramatically throughout Europe and the United States over the past four decades. And it’s not just gray divorce that’s on the rise – older adults in long-term cohabiting unions also are ending their relationships in unprecedented numbers (Alderotti et al., 2022; Vignoli et al., 2025). But these “silver splits” don’t necessarily bring heartbreak and depression. Rather, new research shows that close ties with adult children can be the key to healing and guard against depression before, during, and after the union dissolves. But for the nearly 10 percent of older adults in Europe who are “disconnected” from their adult children – meaning that they’ve had no contact with at least one child in the past year – the emotional pain of the silver split can linger for years (Jessee & Carr, 2025a). 

What are “silver splits” and why are they so common?

• Ever-rising numbers of adults in their 50s, 60s, and 70s are leaving (or are being left by) their long-term romantic partners. Experts point to four main reasons behind this uptick in rates of “gray divorce” and “silver splits.” First, older adults are living longer than ever before; people in their 50s and 60s know that they have several decades ahead, and some are realizing that they don’t want to spend their “golden years” in a loveless or unfulfilling union.

• Second, at midlife, people often look back at their lives and decide to make a change – fixing those things that aren’t working and taking steps to find personal fulfillment and happiness in the future.

• Third, with the onset of health problems and caregiving demands in midlife and older age, some couples are seeing their marital quality dip under the stress. In the process, they discover that they may lack the love, understanding, or patience needed to grapple with the challenges that come with age.

• Finally, when children leave the family home and parents are left in their “empty nest,” some spouses or partners recognize that their children were the glue holding them together, and that their relationship has become distant, boring, or worse (Alderotti et al., 2022; Vignoli et al., 2025).

How parent-child relationships help (or hurt) couples

Besides spouses and partners, adult children are among the most important people in the lives of older adults. Just as the “empty nest” stage can hasten a break-up, close ties with adult children can provide a powerful emotional resource as older adults manage the strain of divorce. Yet the absence of ties with children can make coping with the divorce or split all the more difficult, as our recent research has shown (Jessee & Carr, 2025a).

We tracked more than 500 adults aged 50+ over time, and examined how their symptoms of depression (i.e., feeling sad, pessimistic, or despondent) changed before, during, and after the dissolution of their marriage or cohabiting union. What we found was surprising – and counters the widespread notion that depression is inevitable when romantic relationships end. We found that among older adults who had regular contact with one or more of their adult children, their number of depressive symptoms was low throughout the entire study period, either when married, when going through their break-up, or in the years that followed. Even more encouraging, their already low number of depression symptoms fell considerably in the longer term. Four years after their union ended, they showed an uptick in their emotional well-being, revealing the psychological resilience of those who end a potentially unsatisfying union, and who have emotional support from their children.

In stark contrast, a much less rosy picture emerged for the small yet rarely studied population of older adults who are “disconnected” from one child (or more), i.e., those who had a complete lack of contact with at least one adult child in the 12-months preceding their split. Researchers have shown that severely strained or distant ties with even one child (regardless of ties with other children) can be a critical source of stress and duress for older adults (Fingerman et al., 2012; Jessee & Carr, 2025b). Fortunately, disconnectedness is rare in Europe; only 10 percent of parents who experience a silver split are disconnected, with higher rates for men than women. 

Regardless of the reason for parent-child disconnectedness, these severed ties sting – and the sting is particularly painful for those who have recently ended a marriage, as our study shows. As Figure 1 illustrates, “silver splitters” disconnected from an adult child experienced a stark and steady increase in depressive symptoms during their split and in the following years. Their depressive symptoms jumped sharply upon dissolution, and were still increasing four years after the transition. Parents who were disconnected from one or more children had significantly more depressive symptoms than their connected counterparts at every stage of the dissolution process, an observation that likely reflects the added strain and lack of support at the core of disconnectedness.

Conclusions

Divorce and silver splits don’t need to be stressful. Older adults should feel encouraged to end unions that are unsatisfying or distressing. Those who have sufficient emotional support can withstand the transition without adverse effects on their mental health. However, we need to pay attention to those growing old with strained or distant intergenerational social ties. Older men and women who are disconnected from a child are more vulnerable to the emotional pains of silver splits and other stressors, and also may lack the practical support needed to manage the challenges of aging – especially as their health worsens. We encourage practitioners to talk to their midlife and older patients about the sources of support they can rely on, rather than presuming that merely having adult children or a former spouse is protective. With the proper support from trusted family or friends, older adults will be better equipped to manage the inevitable ups and downs of life.

References

Alderotti, G., Tomassini, C., & Vignoli, D. (2022). ‘Silver splits’ in Europe. Demographic Research, 46, 619-652.

Fingerman, K. L., Cheng, Y. P., Birditt, K., & Zarit, S. (2012). Only as happy as the least happy child: multiple grown children’s problems and successes and middle-aged parents’ well-being. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67(2), 184-193.

Jessee, L., & Carr, D. (2025a). Silver Splits and Parent–Child Disconnectedness: Mental Health Consequences for European Older Adults. European Journal of Population, 41(1), 1-20.

Jessee, L., & Carr, D. (2025b). Parent–Child Disconnectedness and Older European Adults’ Mental Health: Do Patterns Differ by Marital Status and Gender?. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 80(6), gbaf024.

Vignoli, D., Alderotti, G., & Tomassini, C. (2025). Partners’ health and silver splits in Europe: A gendered pattern?. Journal of Marriage and Family, 87(4), 1639-1663.

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Low fertility continues to be a policy concern across high-income countries. While public debate often focuses on whether women choose to have children at all, much of the variation in fertility today actually lies in the decision to have a second child. Since the 1970s, third and higher-order births have become increasingly rare in many European countries. As a result, understanding what encourages – or discourages – progression to a second birth has become central to explaining fertility trends.

Low fertility and formal childcare 

In this context, formal childcare is widely seen as a key mechanism for reconciling work and family life, particularly in dual-earner societies (Gauthier, 2007; Neyer & Andersson, 2008). By reducing the time and energy burden of caregiving, formal childcare may help parents – especially mothers – balance paid work with their desire to expand their family. Yet most research has focused on whether childcare is available, not whether it is actually used by individual mothers (Neyer & Andersson, 2008; Wood & Neels, 2019). In the context of the increasing availability of longitudinal microdata, I aim to contribute to the documentation of individual-level linkages between the uptake of family policy and childbearing (Kreyenfeld, 2021).

In a recent study based on administrative data from Belgium (Wood 2025), I tested whether using formal childcare for a first child increases the hazard of having a second child in the near future. The Belgian case is instructive. It combines relatively high levels of childcare provision with clear signs of unmet demand. Formal childcare is available from 3 months of age and is commonly used before children enter free pre-primary education at age 2.5 years. However, waiting lists and shortages remain widespread. Parents are often advised to begin searching for a spot as soon as they know the woman is pregnant.

Higher second birth hazards for formal childcare users

This constrained setting reveals a sharp divide between families who manage to secure a formal childcare place and those who do not. The uptake of formal childcare by working mothers appears to be shaped by a range of socio-demographic, economic, regional, and familial factors. Before accounting for selection effects, mothers who began using formal childcare and their partners tended to be older, higher educated, more likely to be employed, and had higher individual incomes, particularly among mothers. They also exhibited greater housing stability and material resources, such as homeownership and more spacious living arrangements. Regionally, users were less likely to live in Wallonia (i.e. the southern French and German speaking region) and more likely to live in wealthier municipalities. Additionally, users of formal childcare were also less likely to co-reside with non-working adults or live near grandparents. 

After accounting for such selection into formal childcare uptake, working mothers who use formal childcare for their firstborn are significantly more likely to have a second child within the next few years. Importantly, this is not only because such mothers tend to be more educated or affluent: even when comparing mothers with similar backgrounds, childcare use itself seems to be linked to higher second birth hazards. Figure 1 illustrates the difference between the second birth hazards, in terms of predicted hazards (Panel A) and the ratio between the hazards for childcare users and their matched control groups (Panel B). Regardless of the year since the first birth considered, second birth hazards are higher for childcare users, ranging from 43% to 6% higher second birth hazards. The effect is particularly strong in the first two years after the birth of the first child – a period when work-family tensions are often most acute. Shorter birth intervals among childcare users suggest that access to formal care helps mothers feel confident in having a second child sooner. Finally, additional calculations (not shown here) indicate that – given the differential second birth hazards presented in figure 1 – the percentage of one-child mothers who progress to a second birth is 77% for childcare users, versus 72% for the matched control group. 

Although I did not directly test the potential causal mechanisms driving this positive linkage between formal childcare uptake and the transition to a second birth, several pathways are likely to be responsible for the identified effect. On a practical level, the ability to outsource some caregiving allows mothers to maintain their position in the labour market, reducing the financial and career-related costs of childbearing. This can make a second child feel more attainable, particularly for families with two working parents.

On a deeper level, using formal childcare may also change how mothers experience the balance between societal expectations around motherhood and employment. In contexts where both the two-child family and dual-earner model are seen as norms, formal childcare can ease the tension between being both a “good mother” and a working professional. Experiencing formal childcare for a first child may give mothers the reassurance that these roles are compatible.

Improving individual access to formal childcare

These findings offer a new lens on the childcare–fertility relationship. While many studies have shown that availability of childcare at the national or regional level is associated with higher fertility, this study indicates that actual uptake plays a distinct role. In other words, it is not only whether formal childcare exists – but whether families can and do use it – that shapes reproductive decisions.

Policy efforts to expand childcare availability remain essential, particularly in settings where demand for formal childcare exceeds supply. To fully support families, policies must also address barriers to uptake, including affordability, accessibility, and administrative complexity.

Not all families have equal access to formal childcare. In Belgium, use is strongly patterned, for instance by education, income, housing, and region. If childcare use supports continued fertility, unequal access may contribute to social disparities in family formation.

References

Gauthier, A. H. (2007). The impact of family policies on fertility in industrialized countries: a review of the literature. Population Research and Policy Review, 26(3), 323-346. 

Kreyenfeld, M. (2021). Causal Modelling in Fertility Research: A Review of the Literature and an Application to a Parental Leave Policy Reform. Comparative Population Studies, 46. doi:10.12765/CPoS-2021-10

Neyer, G., & Andersson, G. (2008). Consequences of Family Policies on Childbearing Behavior: Effects or Artifacts? Population and Development Review, 34(4), 699-724. 

Wood, J., & Neels, K. (2019). Local Childcare Availability and Dual-Earner Fertility: Variation in Childcare Coverage and Birth Hazards Over Place and Time. European Journal of Population, 35(5), 913-937. doi:10.1007/s10680-018-9510-4

Wood, J. (2025) Does Formal Childcare Uptake Stimulate Fertility? Formal Childcare Usage and Second Births. Popul Res Policy Rev 44, 42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-025-09963-1.

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Childhood migration and the loss of social networks

Childhood migration is consistently associated with adverse life outcomes (Anderson et al. 2014), and the leading explanation is the disruption of social networks. In a recent study (Bernard, McMullin and Vidal 2025), we tested this hypothesis by using loneliness as a proxy for the loss of social ties. Three key findings emerge:

1. Number of moves: The more times children move, the higher the likelihood of reporting loneliness during their school years (Figure 1a).

2. Duration of residence: Loneliness decreases with the length of stay of children in the same place, suggesting that they gradually rebuild social networks at destination (Figure 1b).

3. Chronic migration: The protective effect of residential stability weakens with repeated moves, highlighting the social risks of chronic mobility (Figure 1c).

The moderating role of family structures

Family members are an important source of social support. We therefore tested whether family structure protects against migration-induced loneliness. Results show that living with both parents and having siblings both reduce the likelihood of feeling lonely, by around 30% and 20% respectively. Crucially, siblings moderate the effect of migration: movers without siblings report an 11.2% predicted probability of being often lonely, compared with 6.7% among movers with siblings (Figure 2). In contrast, living with both parents does not buffer the negative impact of migration.

The societal context: individualism versus collectivism

Cultural values shape the experience of loneliness (Barreto et al. 2021). 

Two patterns stand out (Figure 3):

• Absolute levels: Collectivist societies, where tighter family-based networks are the norm (southern and eastern Europe), display consistently lower overall loneliness than individualist ones, where independence and self-reliance are emphasised (northern and western Europe);

• Relative impact: The association between number of moves and loneliness is comparatively stronger in collectivist societies. This may reflect higher social needs and a greater gap between expected and realised relationships among repeat movers (Johnson and Mullins 1987). In individualist countries, by contrast, children may develop better coping strategies when moving (Tamis‐LeMonda et al. 2008), but still report higher baseline levels of loneliness.

Policy implications

By considering how the association between internal migration and loneliness varies by frequency, and by unpacking the moderating role of family structures and cultural values, we can identify the groups most at risk. These are children without siblings living in highly individualist and highly mobile societies, such as France, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden.

Two broader demographic trends are likely to intensify risks: the rise of single-child families and the global spread of individualist orientations, even if relative differences between countries remain stable (Beugelsdijk, Maseland, and Van Hoorn 2015). As a result, the impact of internal migration on loneliness may be greater for today’s children than for earlier cohorts. In Europe, the spatial gradient of higher mobility in the North and West versus lower mobility in the South and East mirrors the cultural gradient in individualism. Together, these patterns suggest that migration-induced loneliness will remain a pressing issue, particularly in northern and western Europe. At the same time, falling levels of internal migration in some countries (Alvarez, Bernard, and Lieske 2021) have lowered aggregate exposure to migration but have not attenuated risks among childhood movers. Rather, the decline in migration is likely to have shifted the risk of mobility-induced loneliness toward a smaller group of children with higher needs.

In summary, a single childhood migration may have limited effects on loneliness and can even foster valuable skills through learning how to leave and enter new social contexts (Bernard 2023). Conversely, children who move often are at a higher risk of more adverse consequences. It is therefore essential to identify and support those children most at risk of isolation in their new location, particularly in countries with individualist orientations.

References

Alvarez, M., A.  Bernard, and S. N. Lieske. 2021. ‘Understanding internal migration trends in OECD countries’, Population, Space and Place, e2451.

Anderson, Sara, Tama Leventhal, Sandra Newman, and Veronique Dupéré. 2014. ‘Residential mobility among children: A framework for child and family policy’, Cityscape, 16: 5-36.

Barreto, Manuela, Christina Victor, Claudia Hammond, Alice Eccles, Matt T Richins, and Pamela Qualter. 2021. ‘Loneliness around the world: Age, gender, and cultural differences in loneliness’, Personality and Individual Differences, 169: 110066.

Bernard, Aude. 2023. ‘Does Internal Migration Contribute to the Intergenerational Transmission of Socioeconomic Inequalities? The Role of Childhood Migration’, Demography: 10826486-86.

Bernard, Aude, Patricia McMullin, and Sergi Vidal. 2025. ‘Internal Migration and Loneliness in Childhood: The Moderating Role of Family Structure and Cultural Individualism’, European Journal of Population, 41: 1-33.

Beugelsdijk, Sjoerd, Robbert Maseland, and André Van Hoorn. 2015. ‘Are scores on H ofstede’s dimensions of national culture stable over time? A Cohort Analysis’, Global Strategy Journal, 5: 223-40.

Johnson, D Paul, and Larry C Mullins. 1987. ‘Growing old and lonely in different societies: Toward a comparative perspective’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 2: 257-75.

Tamis‐LeMonda, Catherine S, Niobe Way, Diane Hughes, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Ronit Kahana Kalman, and Erika Y Niwa. 2008. ‘Parents’ goals for children: The dynamic coexistence of individualism and collectivism in cultures and individuals’, Social development, 17: 183-209.

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For more than 50 years, people in the U.S. have reported that their ideal family size is about 2.5 children (Behrman 2024; Hagewen and Morgan 2005). The large share of Americans reporting ideal family sizes of two children points to the persistence of a widespread “two-child norm” in American family life. Yet, since 2010, the average number of children born per woman in the U.S. has dropped below two and the decline is ongoing (Osterman et al. 2025). 

The persistence and puzzle of the two-child norm

This gap between the number of children Americans say is ideal and the number of children they have is puzzling. For decades, the U.S. showed close alignment between ideal family size and actual fertility, unlike many European countries where this gap has been long-standing (Hagewen and Morgan 2005). The growing disconnect between ideal family size and actual childbearing raises questions about the strength of the two-child norm in the contemporary U.S.
Standard surveys ask people about their ideal family size without considering the complex realities of life today. Factors like financial stress, work demands, partnership status, and caregiving responsibilities can influence whether having two children is truly a top priority. To understand how strong preferences for two children really are, we need to look at the choices people make when juggling multiple competing demands. 

Measuring the strength of preference for two children

We conducted a nationally representative online survey of 1,785 American women of childbearing ages (18-35) using a method called a “conjoint survey experiment” (Behrman, Marshall, and Keusch 2025). Instead of asking for a single ideal number of children, this method presents participants with different family scenarios that vary in terms of number of children and other life factors such as financial status, relationship status, work hours, family policies and so on. Respondents choose which scenario they prefer, revealing the importance of each factor when forced to make trade-offs.
This approach lets us answer two key questions:

1) Do young women prefer two children when considering other family, financial, and work demands?

2) How does preference for two children compare to preference for other factors of family life such as relationship status or financial stability?

Our study found that preference for two children was not significantly stronger than preference for zero, one, or three children when competing work, financial, and family demands were taken into account (Figure 1). However, women clearly preferred families with two children over those with four, thus suggesting preference away from very large families. 

We also found that factors such as relationship status, financial security, work hours, and the availability of family-friendly policies had a stronger influence on family preferences than the number of children. For example, being married (rather than single or living with someone) and having enough money to pay household bills (rather than financially struggling) mattered more for family preferences than whether the family had two children. These results indicate that preference for two children is weak compared to preferences about other dimensions of family life. 
Interestingly, younger women aged 18 to 25 showed a notably higher preference for having no children compared to older women in the sample (Figure 2). This could be because childbearing is less central to the life goals of young Americans. Other studies support this, showing that young adults often place more importance on career fulfillment and social relationships than on having children (Parker and Minkin 2023). Alternatively, this finding could be driven by the younger ages of these respondents who may change their minds about childbearing as they grow older and consider starting families more seriously. 

What does this mean for U.S. fertility? 

Our results help make sense of why U.S. fertility rates are falling even though the two-child ideal remains common in surveys. They indicate that having two children is not a strong preference for many young American women when faced with competing work, family, and financial pressures. Instead, preferences for family size appear less important than other life priorities such as achieving financial stability or finding a long-term partner. While the two-child norm may remain an important cultural reference point, achieving the two-child ideal does not appear to be one of the highest priorities for many American women of reproductive ages.

References 

Behrman, Julia A. 2024. “Ideal Family Size and Reproductive Orientations: An Exploration of Change Over Time in the United States.” Demography 61(5):1535–57. doi:10.1215/00703370-11577510.

Behrman, Julia, Emily A. Marshall, and Florian Keusch. 2025. “An Experimental Approach to Assessing Young Women’s Childbearing Preferences: A Research Note on the United States.” Demography 11962185. doi:10.1215/00703370-11962185.

Hagewen, Kellie J., and S. Philip Morgan. 2005. “Intended and Ideal Family Size in the United States, 1970-2002.” Population and Development Review 31(3):507–27. doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2005.00081.x.

Osterman, M. J. K., B. E. Hamilton, J. A. Martin, A. K. Driscoll, and C. P. Valenzuela. 2025. Births: Final Data for 2023. vol 74, no 1. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.

Parker, Kim, and Rachel Minkin. 2023.“What Makes for a Fulfilling Life?” .

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Child maltreatment, which encompasses both physical and sexual abuse and a variety of forms of neglect, is both common and consequential for children. Because of its high prevalence and serious consequences, child protective services (CPS) across the world are charged with responding to reports of child abuse, investigating suspected cases, confirming when maltreatment has occurred, and, in the face of serious maltreatment or grave future risk, intervening in some way. This may take the form of less invasive interventions involving services to the family, or more invasive ones ranging from foster care placement, also called out-of-home placement, to the termination of parental rights in the most extreme instances. 

Little information on child protective services

Unfortunately, information on the prevalence of these various forms of CPS contact is scarce, with the limited (but excellent) research on this topic providing data on five to ten countries at most. While we know that CPS contact is extremely common in at least some settings, we lack information on how CPS contact rates vary across countries, and have even less understanding of what might drive such variation. 

Having received funding from the ROCKWOOL Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark, our research team set out with an ambitious plan to find out as much as we could about rates of CPS investigation, confirmed maltreatment, and foster care placement in 64 countries in the Global North and to then make those data publicly available to the field (Roehkrasse et al. 2023; Wildeman et al. 2025). Although we also saw rates of CPS contact as important in other national contexts, the virtual lack of population-representative published research on this topic from many countries in the Global South suggested that such an endeavor would likely be fruitless outside of the Global North. We therefore focused our efforts on those nations. 

Our study provided support for three core conclusions, the first of which is represented in Figure 1. For all our efforts – and this study involved a huge amount of labor – data on CPS contact was regrettably scarce and we obtained data on only 44 of the 64 countries we investigated. This was especially the case for CPS investigations (data obtained for about a dozen countries), and confirmed maltreatment (data obtained for nearly 20 countries). Having sunk all that labor into this project, previous research that found data on five to ten countries all of a sudden looked much more successful! 

We were more successful for out-of-home care, however, as we were able to recover data on the number of children per 1,000 in the population living in out-of-home care in nearly 40 countries. This was an encouraging finding, as it allowed for a much more intensive dive in terms of variation across countries than would be possible with a dataset half that size. 

Great variation in practices …

This led to our second discovery: as shown in Figure 2, there is vast variation in the prevalence of foster care across countries. Figure 2 also includes the prevalence rates for the other types of CPS contact so anyone who is interested can see those too. The highest rate of out-of-home placement was in Greenland, where an amazing 6.8% of children in 2006 and 5.4% of children in 2019 were living in out-of-home care. These proportions are so extreme, in fact, that the figure had to be rescaled to differentiate between the rates in other countries while including Greenland in the same figure. Russia and Latvia also had high rates of out-of-home placement, but these were only around one-third as high as the rates in Greenland. Most other countries had rates between 0.5% and 1.0%, with Singapore only having about 0.1% of children in foster care. 

… with no apparent regularity

If finding data on various stages of CPS contact was challenging, figuring out what drives variation across countries was more difficult still. Figure 3 shows how we tried to group rates of out-of-home care across four types of countries:

• Asian
• Anglophone
• Western, Southern, and Eastern European, and 
• Northern European. 

The results from this exercise show that Asian and, to a lesser degree, Anglophone countries tend to have low and relatively tightly bounded rates of out-of-home placement. The other types of countries showed considerable heterogeneity in prevalence, however, with virtually no discernible pattern in terms of levels or trends. Thus, it would appear that the specific type of country is only slightly predictive, at best, of the rate of out-of-home placement. 

The findings from our studies highlight the considerable heterogeneity across countries in rates of out-of-home placement, although explanations for this heterogeneity are still sorely lacking. More extensive data both on earlier stages of CPS contact and on the factors that might lead a country to have a high, moderate, or low rates of out-of-home placement are especially needed. 

References

Roehrkasse, Alexander F., Liza Becker, Christopher Wildeman, and Peter Fallesen. “Introducing a new data resource for comparative child welfare research: The ROCKWOOL-Duke global child welfare database.” Children and Youth Services Review 152 (2023): 107075.

Wildeman, Christopher, Alexander F. Roehrkasse, Alexandra Gibbons, Sarah Sernaker, Liza Becker, and Peter Fallesen. “Two Decades of Child Welfare System Contact in the Global North: A Research Note on Trends in 44 Countries.” Demography (2025): 11793609.

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