Demographic Research

BACKGROUND: The US Latino population is rapidly aging and becoming increasingly diverse with respect to nativity and national origin. Increased longevity along with medical advancements in treatment have resulted in a higher number of older Latinos living with morbidity. Therefore, there is a need to understand variability in Latino health among older adults. OBJECTIVES: This paper documents mid- and late-life health differences in morbidity by race/ethnicity, nativity, and country of origin among adults aged 50 and older...

BACKGROUND: Older Black and Hispanic adults are more likely to be cognitively impaired than older White adults. Disadvantages in educational achievement for minority and immigrant populations may contribute to disparities in cognitive impairment. OBJECTIVE: Examine the role of education in racial/ethnic and nativity differences in cognitive impairment/no dementia (CIND) and dementia among older US adults. METHODS: Data comes from the 2012 Health and Retirement Study...

BACKGROUND: Researchers have increasingly turned to longitudinal data to understand how the family environment of children changes over time and how this change affects their well-being. While the value of such efforts is clear, the inherent challenges of collecting robust data over time may limit or bias our understanding of family complexity. OBJECTIVE: Drawing on data from an exploratory study on kinship structure and support for low income single mothers and their young children in Nairobi, Kenya, this paper aims to (1) assess the strengths and weaknesses of our approach in reflecting the complexities of kinship dynamics and (2) analyze how methodological issues such as selection and reporting inconsistency can influence our understanding of the role of kin in children's lives...

Background: Despite an expansive body of research on health and access to medical care among Mexican immigrants in the United States, research on return migrants focuses primarily on their labor market mobility and contributions to local development. Objective: Motivated by recent scholarship that documents poor mental and physical health among Mexican return migrants, this study investigates return migrants' health insurance coverage and access to medical care...

BACKGROUND: Teenage motherhood and smoking have important health implications for youth in the United States and globally, but the link between teen childbearing and subsequent smoking is inadequately understood. The selection of disadvantaged young women into early childbearing and smoking may explain higher smoking levels among teen mothers, but teen motherhood may also shape subsequent smoking through compromised maternal depression or socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity may condition these processes...

BACKGROUND: Gender attitudes toward women's employment are of particular importance because they positively influence gender-equal outcomes in the labor market. Our understanding of the mechanisms that promote egalitarian gender attitudes among immigrants, however, remains limited. OBJECTIVE: By studying first- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origins and living in different countries, this article seeks to explain under what conditions the prevalent cultural attitudes toward gender roles at the origin and destination influence immigrants' gender attitudes...

Background: Some existing estimates suggest, controversially, that life expectancy at age 60 (LE60) of Latin American males is exceptionally high. Knowledge of adult mortality in Latin America is often based on unreliable statistics or indirect demographic methods. Objectives: This study aimed to gather direct estimates of mortality at older ages in two Latin American countries (Mexico and Costa Rica) using recent longitudinal surveys and to determine the socioeconomic status (SES) gradients for LE60...

METHODS: Most quantitative research on fertility decline in the United States ignores the potential impact of cultural and familial factors. We rely on new complete-count data from the 1880 U.S. census to construct couple-level measures of nativity/ethnicity, religiosity, and kin availability. We include these measures with a comprehensive set of demographic, economic, and contextual variables in Poisson regression models of net marital fertility to assess their relative importance. We construct models with and without area fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity...

Background: Few studies have examined long-term changes in ethnoracial diversity for US states despite the potential social, economic, and political ramifications of such changes at the state level. Objective: We describe shifts in diversity magnitude and structure from 1980 through 2015 to determine if states are following a universal upward path. Methods: Decennial census data for 1980-2010 and American Community Survey data for 2015 are used to compute entropy index ( E ) and Simpson index ( S ) measures of diversity magnitude based on five panethnic populations...

Background: While probabilistic projection methods for projecting life expectancy exist, few account for covariates related to life expectancy. Generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics have a large, immediate negative impact on the life expectancy in a country, but this impact can be mitigated by widespread use of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Thus, projection methods for countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics could be improved by accounting for HIV prevalence, the future course of the epidemic, and ART coverage...

Background: China has been characterized by persistently low fertility rates since the 1990s. Existing literature has examined the relationships of fertility levels with social, economic, and policy-related determinants. However, the possible spatial variations in these relationships have not been investigated. Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the potential spatially varying relationships between county-level fertility rates and policy and socioeconomic factors in China...

BACKGROUND: Demographers have long been interested in the relationship between living arrangements and gendered outcomes for children in sub-Saharan Africa. Most extant research conflates household structure with composition and has revealed little about the pathways that link these components to gendered outcomes. OBJECTIVES: First, we offer a conceptual approach that differentiates structure from composition with a focus on gendered processes that operate in the household; and second, we demonstrate the value of this approach through an analysis of educational progress for boys and girls in rural South Africa...

BACKGROUND: Limited evidence exists regarding how functional limitation patterns of women in developing countries unfold through midlife and into old age, a critical period during which the tendency to develop severe problems is fomented. OBJECTIVE: Functional limitation prevalence and patterns through midlife into early old age, and their determinants, are examined among women in the Philippines. METHODS: Data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Study are monitored from 1994 to 2015...

BACKGROUND: While the health crisis in the former USSR has been well-documented in the case of Russia and other northern former Soviet republics, little is known about countries located in the southern tier of the region, i.e., the Caucasus and Central Asia. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents new mortality information from two Caucasian countries, Georgia and Armenia. Results are compared with information from two relevant countries previously examined in the literature, Kyrgyzstan and Russia...

BACKGROUND: Recent evidence from health and demographic surveillance sites (HDSS) has shown that increasing access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) is reducing mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, due to limited vital statistics registration in many of the countries most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there is limited evidence of the magnitude of ART's effect outside of specific HDSS sites. This paper leverages longitudinal household/family roster data from the Malawi Longitudinal Survey of Families and Health (MLSFH) to estimate the effect of ART availability in public clinics on population-level mortality based on a geographically dispersed sample of individuals in rural Malawi...

BACKGROUND: Time shared with a partner is an indicator of marital well-being and couples want to spend time together. However, time with a partner depends on work and family arrangements as well as the policies, norms, and values that prevail in society. Contrary to time spent with children, couples' shared time in cross-national context is relatively unstudied. Previous studies from specific countries show that dual-earner couples spend less time together and that parents spend less time alone together...

BACKGROUND: Segregation in Southern cities has been described as a 20th -century development, layered onto an earlier pattern in which whites and blacks (both slaves and free black people) shared the same neighborhoods. Urban historians have pointed out ways in which the Southern postbellum pattern was less benign, but studies relying on census data aggregated by administrative areas - and segregation measures based on this data - have not confirmed their observations. METHODS: This study is based mainly on 100% microdata from the 1880 census that has been mapped at the address level in Washington, D...

BACKGROUND: There are large differences in life expectancy by educational attainment in the United States. Previous research has found obesity's contribution to these differences to be small. Those findings may be sensitive to how obesity is estimated. METHODS: This analysis uses discrete-time logistic regressions with data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), pooled from 1988 to 1994 and 1999 to 2010, to estimate the contribution of differences in adiposity, or body fat, to educational differences in mortality...

BACKGROUND: Qualitative evidence from sub-Saharan Africa, where a generalized AIDS epidemic exists, suggests that attractiveness may play a role in shaping individual-level HIV risk. Attractive women, who are often blamed for the epidemic and stigmatized, are believed to pose a higher HIV risk because they are viewed as having more and riskier partners. OBJECTIVE: We examine the association between perceived attractiveness and HIV infection and risk in rural Malawi in the midst of the country's severe AIDS epidemic...

BACKGROUND: There has been growing interest in the stalled transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and its consequences for young people's socioeconomic outcomes. However, little is known about how important life transitions relate to youth psychosocial well-being in the region. OBJECTIVE: Drawing on a life course framework, we estimate the associations between making transitions in education, employment, and marriage with changes in mental health among young people in Egypt...