Demographic Research

BACKGROUND: Smoking is known to vary by marital status, but little is known about its contribution to marital status differences in longevity. We examined the changing contribution of smoking to mortality differences between married and never married, divorced or widowed Finnish men and women aged 50 years and above in 1971-2010. DATA AND METHODS: The data sets cover all persons permanently living in Finland in the census years 1970, 1975 through 2000 and 2005 with a five-year mortality follow-up...

BACKGROUND: Marriage histories are a valuable data source for investigating nuptiality. While researchers typically acknowledge the problems associated with their use, it is unknown to what extent these problems occur and how marriage analyses are affected. OBJECTIVE: This paper seeks to investigate the quality of marriage histories by measuring levels of misreporting, examining the characteristics associated with misreporting, and assessing whether misreporting biases marriage indicators...

BACKGROUND: Little is known about even the relatively recent demographic history of Africa, because of the lack of data. Elsewhere, historical demographic trends have been reconstructed by applying family reconstitution to church records. Such data also exist throughout Africa from the late 19th century. For the Counting Souls Project, nearly one million records from the oldest Catholic parishes in East and Central Africa have been digitised. These data are currently being processed into a relational database...

BACKGROUND: The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was the most severe and lengthy economic crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression. The impacts on the population were multi-dimensional, but operated largely through local labor markets. OBJECTIVE: To examine differences in recession-related changes in county unemployment rates and assess how population and place characteristics shaped these patterns. METHODS: We calculate and decompose Theil Indexes to describe recession-related changes in the distribution of unemployment rates between counties and states...

BACKGROUND: Maternal labor force participation has increased dramatically over the last 40 years, yet surprisingly little is known about longitudinal patterns of maternal labor force participation in the years after a birth, or how these patterns vary by education. OBJECTIVE: We document variation by maternal education in mothers' labor force participation (timing, intensity, non-standard work, multiple job-holding) over the first nine years after the birth of a child...

BACKGROUND: The growing prevalence of migrant children in diverse contexts requires a reconsideration of the intergenerational consequences of migration. To understand how migration and duration of residence are associated with children's schooling, we need more comparative work that can point to the similarities and differences in outcomes for children across contexts. OBJECTIVE: This paper addresses the importance of nativity and duration of residence for children's school enrollment on both sides of a binational migration system: The United States and Mexico...

BACKGROUND: Although Black and Hispanic young adults in the U.S. are less likely than Whites to move out of the parental home and more likely than Whites to return, reasons for these differences have not been clearly identified. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the ability of racial/ethnic disparities in life course transitions, socioeconomic resources, and family connectivity to account for racial/ethnic differences in leaving and returning home. METHODS: Using data from the 2005-2011 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Transition into Adulthood study (N=1,491, age 18 to 26), we estimated discrete-time event history models predicting the timing of moving out of and back into the parental home...

BACKGROUND: In 1987, the U.S. unintended pregnancy rate was 59 per 1,000 women aged 15-44; the rate fell to 54 in 2008. Over this period, American women experienced dramatic demographic shifts, including an aging population that was better educated and more racially and ethnically diverse. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explain trends in unintended pregnancy and understand what factors contributed most strongly to changes in rates over time, focusing on population composition and group-specific changes...

BACKGROUND: More than 60 years ago the international community declared literacy a basic human right. Recognition of its intrinsic value and evidence of its social and economic benefits have motivated an expansive international effort to estimate the percentage of adults that can read, especially in low-income countries where educational opportunities are limited. Population data on adults' educational attainment is commonly used to approximate adult literacy rates. Though increasing evidence from school-based studies of pupils confirm literacy achievement is not universal - even at advanced grades - it remains unclear whether adults' educational attainment is reflective of their literacy...

BACKGROUND: Understanding residential mobility in early childhood is important for contextualizing influences on child health and well-being. OBJECTIVE: This study describes individual, household, and neighborhood characteristics associated with residential mobility for children aged 0-5. METHODS: We examined longitudinal data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a nationally representative sample of children born in 2001...

BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests individual-level socioeconomic circumstances and resources may be especially salient influences on mortality within the broader context of social, economic, and environmental factors affecting urban 19th century mortality. OBJECTIVE: We sought to test individual-level socioeconomic effects on mortality from infectious and often epidemic diseases in the context of an emerging New England industrial mill town. METHOD: We analyze mortality data from comprehensive death records and a sample of death records linked to census data, for an emergent industrial New England town, to analyze infectious mortality and model socioeconomic effects using Poisson rate regression...

BACKGROUND: Empirical research describes retirement migration to Mexico as a viable option for some older Americans. However, far less research examines this phenomenon among Mexican immigrants in the United States. The literature that does address this topic treats international migration as a singular occurrence and does not examine the possibility of return and subsequent reentry between countries. This omission creates an important gap in our knowledge of international retirement migration considering the strong transnational ties that Mexican immigrants maintain to the home and destination countries...

BACKGROUND: The age distribution and remaining lifespan distribution are identical in stationary populations. The life table survival function is proportional to the age distribution in stationary populations. OBJECTIVE: We provide an alternative interpretation of the life table when viewed by remaining years of life. CONCLUSIONS: The functions describing the mortality of birth cohorts over age are identical to the functions describing the growth of death cohorts as time to death decreases in stationary populations...

BACKGROUND: Women's decision-making autonomy in developing settings has been shown to improve child survival and health outcomes. However, little research has addressed possible connections between women's autonomy and children's schooling. OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between rural women's decision-making autonomy and enrollment status of primary school-age children living in their households and how this relationship differs by child's gender. METHODS: The analysis uses data from a 2009 survey of rural households in four districts of Gaza province in southern Mozambique...

BACKGROUND: With the emergence of obesity as a global health issue an increasing number of major demographic surveys are collecting measured anthropometric data. Yet little is known about the characteristics and reliability of these data. OBJECTIVES: We evaluate the accuracy and reliability of anthropometric data collected in the home during Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), compare our estimates to national standard, clinic-based estimates from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and, using both sources, provide a detailed anthropometric description of young adults in the United States...

BACKGROUND: Most research asks whether or not cohabitation has come to rival marriage. Little is known about the meaning of living apart together (LAT) relationships, and whether LAT is an alternative to marriage and cohabitation or a dating relationship. OBJECTIVE: We examine across Europe: (1) the prevalence of LAT, (2) the reasons for LAT, and (3) the correlates of (a) LAT relationships vis-à-vis being single, married, or cohabiting, and (b) different types of LAT union...

BACKGROUND: Disaffiliation from religion is an important factor behind the rapid rise in persons claiming no religious affiliation in many advanced industrial countries. Scholars typically think of disaffiliation as a life course process that is confined to young adults, with little change occurring among older adults, yet few studies have examined this assumption outside the United States and Great Britain. OBJECTIVE: We evaluate whether the young-adult model of disaffiliation from religion applies in Ireland and Austria, two historically Catholic-majority countries with different levels of non-affiliation growth...

BACKGROUND: A substantial number of young women experience pregnancy scares - thinking they might be pregnant, and later discovering that they are not. Although pregnancy scares are distressing events, little is known about who experiences them and whether they are important to our understanding of unintended pregnancy. OBJECTIVE: We describe the young women who experience pregnancy scares, and examine the link between pregnancy scares and subsequent unintended pregnancy...

BACKGROUND: Blacks have lower life expectancy than whites in the United States. That disparity could be due to racial differences in the causes of death, with blacks being more likely to die of causes that affect the young, or it could be due to differences in the average ages of blacks and whites who die of the same cause. Prior studies fail to distinguish these two possibilities. OBJECTIVE: In this study we determine how much of the 2000-10 reduction in the racial gap in life expectancy resulted from narrowing differences in the cause-specific mean age at death for blacks and whites, as opposed to changing cause-specific probabilities for blacks and whites...

BACKGROUND: HIV is spread through structured sexual networks, which are influenced by migration patterns, but network-oriented studies of mobility and HIV risk behavior have been limited. OBJECTIVE: We present a comprehensive description and initial results from our Migration & HIV in Ghana (MHG) study in Agbogbloshie, an urban slum area within Accra, Ghana. METHODS: The MHG study was a population-based cross-sectional study of adults aged 18-49 in Agbogbloshie in 2012...