After the demographic transition, convergence in all demographic behaviours (moderate fertility, low mortality and very low migration) is the guiding assumption of the UN World Population Prospects Revisions. Maria Castiglioni, … Read more
Homelessness is damaging to individuals and society – and an exceedingly difficult phenomenon for researchers and policy makers to measure and analyse. In this article, James O’Donnell describes a new … Read more
Debates about global poverty often omit demographic factors. Frank-Borge Wietzke tries to fill this gap, and documents a significant effect of fertility on poverty. This influence works in large part … Read more
Recent work on wealthy populations has called into question long-standing conclusions about the importance of birth spacing for infant health. Using data from 77 countries, Joseph Molitoris and colleagues show … Read more
Increasing attention is directed towards the ‘diverging destinies’ of children born in different family contexts. One might expect disparities to be small in Nordic welfare states, yet in Finland, as … Read more
Living standards have risen generally, and poverty rates have fallen across Sub-Saharan Africa since the late 1990s (Chen and Ravallion, 2013). Less is known about how different groups have fared.In … Read more
The marriage-go-round can be a costly ride for children in post-industrial countries as family instability is associated with elevated risk of negative outcomes like teen pregnancy, depression, aggression, asthma, and … Read more
Parental separation increases children’s risk of poverty The proportion of children experiencing parental divorce or separation has increased across Western countries. As a result, in 2014 about 16% of children … Read more
It is heartening to see the renewal of interest in demography by at least some African governments. A share of the credit for this can be attributed to the discourse … Read more
Introduction The need for timely and reliable mortality estimates is acute in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and about half of all under-five deaths. Yet, there is considerable uncertainty as to mortality … Read more
The present world population of 7.3 billion is projected to increase to 8.5 billion or more by 2030, with almost 90 percent of the increase occurring in the developing countries, … Read more