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The literature on climate exposures and human migration has focused largely on assessing short-term responses to temperature and precipitation shocks. In this paper, we suggest that this common coping strategies model can be extended to account for mechanisms that link environmental conditions to migration behavior over longer periods of time. We argue that early-life climate exposures may affect the likelihood of migration from childhood through early adulthood by influencing parental migration, community migration networks, human capital development, and decisions about household resource allocation, all of which are correlates of geographic mobility. After developing this conceptual framework, we evaluate the corresponding hypotheses using a big data approach, analyzing 20 million individual georeferenced records from 81 censuses implemented across 31 countries in tropical Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. For each world region, we estimate regression models that predict lifetime migration (a change in residence between birth and ages 30-39) as a function of temperature and precipitation anomalies in early life, defined as the year prior to birth through age four. Results suggest that early-life climate is systematically associated with changes in the probability of lifetime migration in most regions of the tropics, with the largest effects observed in sub-Saharan Africa. In East and Southern Africa, the effects of temperature shocks vary by sex and educational attainment and in a manner that suggests women and those of lower socioeconomic status are most vulnerable. Finally, we compare our main results with models using alternative measures of climate exposures. This comparison suggests climate exposures during the prenatal period and first few years of life are particularly (but not exclusively) salient for lifetime migration, which is most consistent with the hypothesized human capital mechanism.

A salient question in the digital era is whether new forms of digital communication (e.g., instant messages, video calls, e-mails) have displaced or reinforced more traditional forms of communication (e.g., meeting face-to-face, contact by phone, sending letters/postcards). These opposing hypotheses, i.e., digital communication as a reinforcer versus a displacer, have attracted abundant attention among scholars; however, studies have scarcely explored these hypotheses in the context of communication among kin. Using large-scale and population-based data of 1,945 young to middle-aged (18–55 year-olds) and 2,663 older (68–73 year-olds) Finns, we tested the predictions derived from the displacement and reinforcement hypotheses in several kin dyads (parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, siblings, and aunt/uncle-niece/nephew). The results strongly supported the reinforcement hypothesis in all kin dyads, and in both younger and older adults. Associations were positive even after controlling for a wide range of potentially confounding factors. Hence, it can be concluded that digital means may reinforce rather than displace traditional forms of contact.

Affordable housing has declined in recent decades, yet limited research has examined the demographic and economic changes influencing place-level affordability—especially outside of large metros. In this study I examine the effects of county-level population growth and decline, population aging, and natural amenity development on rates of affordable housing, income, and housing costs across four types of counties. While declines in affordability from 1990-2016 were universal between rural and urban counties, population growth is associated with decreases in affordability in rural counties but increased affordability in large metros counties due to estimated decreases in housing costs. Population aging is estimated to improve affordability in large and small metro counties, despite the associated decrease in income and housing costs across all county types. The effects of aging vary greatly between owners and renters. Natural amenity development, despite its theoretical importance, is not associated with changes in affordability for rural counties.

Arts engagement is a health-related behavior that may be influenced by social inequalities. While the COVID-19 pandemic provided new opportunities for some people to engage in the arts, it might have created barriers for others. We aimed to examine whether there was social patterning in home-based arts engagement during the pandemic in the United States, and whether predictors of engagement differed according to the type of arts activity. We included 4,731 adults who participated in the United States COVID-19 Social Study between April and July 2020. Three types of home-based arts engagement were considered: reading for pleasure, arts or crafts activities, and digital arts activities. Using logistic regression models, we tested cross-sectional associations between a broad range of demographic, socioeconomic, psychosocial, and health-related factors as well as adverse events and worries during lockdown and each type of arts engagement. The factors most strongly associated with all three types of arts engagement were social support, social network size, age, race/ethnicity, keyworker status, and experiencing physical or psychological abuse during the pandemic. However, most socioeconomic and health-related factors were not associated with arts engagement, including household income and mental and physical health problems. Overall, our findings indicate that the social gradient in arts engagement was reduced in the first 4 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Given the health benefits of arts engagement, the potential diversification of arts audiences during the pandemic is promising for both population-level health and wellbeing and the future of the arts and cultural sector.

Small area population forecasts are widely used by government and business for a variety of planning, research and policy purposes, and often influence major investment decisions. Yet, the toolbox of small area population forecasting methods and techniques is modest relative to that for national and large subnational regional forecasting. In this paper, we assess the current state of small area population forecasting, and suggest areas for further research. The paper provides a review of the literature on small area population forecasting methods published over the period 2001–2020. The key themes covered by the review are extrapolative and comparative methods, simplified cohort-component methods, model averaging and combining, incorporating socioeconomic variables and spatial relationships, ‘downscaling’ and disaggregation approaches, linking population with housing, estimating and projecting small area component input data, microsimulation, machine learning, and forecast uncertainty. Several avenues for further research are then suggested, including more work on model averaging and combining, developing new forecasting methods for situations which current models cannot handle, quantifying uncertainty, exploring methodologies such as machine learning and spatial statistics, creating user-friendly tools for practitioners, and understanding more about how forecasts are used. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-021-09671-6.

This chapter reviews the quality of life in European societies, drawing on sociological theories of the quality of life, and specifically touching upon the areas of housing, the environment, health, and time use. One major theme is the social stratification of quality of life, both within and between European societies. The chapter was published in Steffen Mau and Roland Verwiebe, European Societies. Mapping Structure and Change, Policy Press 2010. A Stata replication file that recreates all the Figures in the chapter is available.

Title in Portuguese: Análise do nível, padrão e determinantes dos fluxos populacionais entre Bahia e São PauloAbstract: The main goal of this research is to analyze whether the pattern of concentration of migrants in a specific area of destination is the same as that of the area of origin of those migrants. The 2000 Brazilian Census has migration data for regions of origin (municipality) and destination (group of census tracts). Migration flows from 415 municipalities in the state of Bahia to 875 groups of census tracts in the mesoregion (metropolitan region) of São Paulo are analyzed. In Bahia, migrants are more likely to leave municipalities with low levels of education, which are surrounded by municipalities with the same levels of education. In São Paulo, migrants are more likely to move into areas with low education, and high proportion of population working, which are surrounded by areas with different levels in covariates. Low-skilled migrants are moving into areas with higher opportunities of jobs, but with low-skilled population.Resumo: A migração do Nordeste para São Paulo era caracterizada por fluxos de áreas rurais para áreas urbanas nas décadas de 1960 e 1970. Pessoas de classes sociais desfavorecidas migravam, e ainda migram, do Nordeste para São Paulo em busca de emprego. Nas últimas décadas, a migração interna se tornou mais complexa, com uma maior variedade de lugares de origem e destino, assim como uma mudança nas características sócio-econômicas dos migrantes. A análise descritiva de concentração dos migrantes sugeriu que os municípios com baixas taxas de emigração estão localizados em áreas mais desenvolvidas da Bahia. Os grupos de municípios com alta emigração se situam em áreas centrais do Estado, as quais são conhecidas por apresentarem baixos índices sócio-econômicos e de desenvolvimento. Em relação à análise de concentração de imigrantes na mesorregião de São Paulo, observa-se que os grupos de áreas de ponderação com altas taxas de imigração estão espalhados no oeste e nordeste dessa malha urbana. As áreas com baixas taxas de imigração estão concentradas nas áreas centrais da mesorregião e no sudeste dessa área urbana. Em relação aos modelos de regressão espacial, os resultados estatisticamente significantes indicam que os migrantes da Bahia para São Paulo tendem a apresentar baixa escolaridade e se dirigem para áreas com altas oportunidades de empregos, mas com uma população no destino que também apresenta baixos níveis educacionais.

Title in Portuguese: Caracterização de migrantes em Goiás e Distrito Federal: 1980-2000Abstract: This paper aims to characterize the migrants in the state of Goiás and the Federal District, concerning their region of origin and destination. This study utilizes the 1980, 1991 and 2000 Brazilian Censuses, provided by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The demographic, educational and economic analyses of migrants suggest that population flows are related to labor market opportunities, mainly those ones in direction to the Federal District and the micro-region of Goiânia. Migrants with lower socio-economic and educational status are moving to the municipalities around the Federal District. The migration flows in 1986–1990 suggest that the Federal District surrounding municipalities are the final destination of migration movements that start in urban areas with high costs of life. This area is becoming the new expansion area in the Center-West region for low income migrants from the Southeast and the Federal District.Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é de realizar uma caracterização dos migrantes do Estado de Goiás e Distrito Federal quanto à região de origem e destino. Este estudo é realizado com base nos dados dos Censos de 1980, 1991 e 2000 do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). As análises demográfica, educacional e econômica dos migrantes sugerem fluxos populacionais típicos de pessoas em busca de oportunidades de emprego, principalmente para o Distrito Federal e microrregião de Goiânia. Migrantes de menor nível socioeconômico e educacional se direcionam para o entorno de Brasília. Os fluxos migratórios de 1986–1990 sugerem que o entorno de Brasília é a região de absorção final de movimentos migratórios, provenientes de centros urbanos com alto custo de vida. Essa microrregião está se caracterizando como uma nova área de expansão no Centro-Oeste para migrantes de baixa renda do Sudeste e Distrito Federal.

Scholars suggest that public mental health stigma operates at a meso-level and is associated with severity of symptoms, disclosure, self-esteem, and treatment-seeking behavior. However, the operationalization of public stigma nearly always comes from an individual-level generalization of what others believe. Using data from over 60,000 students on 75 U.S. college and university campuses between 2009-2015, we contextualize public stigma by creating a school-level measure of students’ individual-level endorsed mental health treatment stigma. We present multilevel logistic regression models for 21 different dependent variables. We find that even after controlling for individual-level stigma scores, school-level stigma is negatively associated with self-reports of suicidal ideation and self-injury, although not associated with screens for depression or anxiety. Moreover, school-level stigma is negatively associated with medication use, counseling and therapy visits, and to a lesser degree, informal support. We suggest that future research should continue to examine the contextual environment of public stigma, while policymakers may be able to implement changes to significantly reduce stigma at this level.

The prevalence, consequences, and unequal distribution of parental and own incarceration in the United States are well documented. However, much of our knowledge of the reach of the carceral state into family life is focused on incarceration of a parent, romantic partner, or child, to the exclusion of other important relationships. Using data from the Family History of Incarceration Study, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N = 2,029), this study introduces novel descriptive measures that provide a more comprehensive picture of the demography and racially unequal distribution of family incarceration: degree, generational extension, and permeation. This analysis shows that Black adults in the United States are not only more likely to have experienced family incarceration but are also more likely to have had more family members incarcerated (5.3 members vs. ≤2.8 members for adults of other racial/ethnic groups) and to have had family members from more generations ever incarcerated (1.7 generations vs. ≤1.1 generations for those of other groups). Further, the stability of these estimates across model specifications underscores the importance of interrogating long-standing approaches to the analysis of linkages between race, the criminal legal system, and family life and the investigation of racialized systems and social inequality more broadly.

Race-based and other demographic information on COVID-19 patients is not being collected consistently across provinces in Canada. Therefore, whether the burden of COVID-19 is falling disproportionately on the shoulders of particular demographic groups is relatively unknown. In this article, we first provide an overview of the available geographic and demographic data related to COVID-19. We then make creative use of these existing data to fill the vacuum and identify key demographic risk factors for COVID-19 across Canada's health regions. Drawing on COVID-19 counts and tabular census data, we examine the association between communities' demographic composition and the number of COVID-19 infections. COVID-19 infections are higher in communities with larger shares of Black and low-income residents. Our approach offers a way for researchers and policymakers to use existing data to identify communities nationwide that are vulnerable to the pandemic in the absence of more detailed demographic and more granular geographic data.Les renseignements fondés sur la race et d'autres données démographiques sur les patients atteints du COVID-19 ne sont pas recueillis de manière uniforme dans toutes les provinces du Canada. Par conséquent, si le fardeau du COVID-19 tombe de manière disproportionnée sur les épaules de groupes démographiques particuliers est relativement inconnu. Dans cet article, nous fournissons d'abord un aperçu des données géographiques et démographiques disponibles liées au COVID-19. Nous utilisons ensuite de manière créative ces données existantes pour combler le vide et identifier les principaux facteurs de risque démographiques du COVID-19 dans les régions sociosanitaires du Canada. En nous basant sur les dénombrements de COVID-19 et les données tabulaires du recensement, nous examinons l'association entre la composition démographique des communautés et le nombre d'infections au COVID-19. Les infections au COVID-19 sont plus élevées dans les communautés avec une plus grande proportion de résidents Noirs et à faible revenu. Notre approche offre aux chercheurs et aux décideurs un moyen d'utiliser les données existantes pour identifier les communautés à l'échelle nationale qui sont vulnérables à la pandémie en l'absence de données démographiques plus détaillées et géographiques plus granulaires.

This study investigates rural-urban differences in COVID-19 in terms of its impacts on the physical and mental health, social relationships, employment, and financial hardship of U.S. working-age adults (18–64). I use data from the National Wellbeing Survey collected in February and March 2021 ( N = 3,933). Most respondents (58 percent) reported that COVID-19 has had a negative impact on their lives. Residents of rural counties adjacent to metro areas reported the worst outcomes: they were more likely than residents of large urban counties to report positive tests for coronavirus; to live with someone who tested positive or have a close friend or family member outside of the household test positive; to have a close friend or family member hospitalized; to seek treatment for anxiety or depression; to be late paying rent, mortgage, and other bills; to not be able to afford groceries or other necessities; and to get a loan from family or friends. Recovery policies must consider geographic variation in COVID-19 vulnerability and impacts.

The U.S. period total fertility rate has declined steadily since the Great Recession, reaching 1.73 children in 2018, the lowest level since the 1970s. This pattern could mean that current childbearing cohorts will end up with fewer children than previous cohorts, or this same pattern could be an artifact of a tempo distortion if individuals are simply postponing births they plan to eventually have. In this research note, we use data on current parity and future intended births from the 2006–2017 National Survey of Family Growth to shed light on this issue. We find that total intended parity declined (from 2.26 in 2006–2010 to 2.16 children in 2013–2017), and the proportion intending to remain childless increased slightly. Decomposition indicates that the decline was not due to changes in population composition but rather changes in the subgroups’ rates themselves. The decline in intended parity is particularly notable at young ages and among those who are Hispanic. These results indicate that although tempo distortion is likely an important contributor to the decline in TFR, it is not the sole explanation: U.S. individuals are intending to have fewer children than their immediate predecessors, which may translate into a decline in cohort completed parity. However, the change in intended parity is modest, and average intended parity remains above two children.

This study investigates fertility responses to the business cycle in the Nordic countries by comparing period variation in women’s childbearing propensity. We harmonize register data from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden to compare childbearing in the aftermath of the two most recent crises that hit those economies: the 1990s and 2010s. We use event-history techniques to present parity-specific fertility, by calendar year, relative to a defined pre-recession year. We further examine any possible impact of the two recessions by women’s age and education. Results show a large heterogeneity across the five Nordic countries in the childbearing developments after 1990. This variation largely disappears after 2008 when period trends in birth hazards become more similar across countries. Likewise, the educational differences that characterized the variation in childbearing relative risk after 1990 considerably diminish in the years after 2010, especially for first and second births. Economic theories do not suffice to explain this reversal from the heterogeneity of the 1990s to the homogeneity of the 2010s in the childbearing response to recession episodes across countries and socioeconomic groups. Our findings suggest the need to expand the theoretical framework explaining the cyclicality of fertility towards the perception of economic and welfare uncertainty.

Zika virus epidemics have potential large-scale population effects. Controlled studies of mice and nonhuman primates indicate that Zika affects fecundity, raising concerns about miscarriage in human populations. In regions of Brazil, Zika risk peaked months before residents learned about the epidemic and its relation to congenital anomalies. This spatiotemporal variation supports analysis of both biological effects of Zika infection on fertility and the effects of learning about Zika risk on reproductive behavior. Causal inference techniques used with vital statistics indicate that the epidemic caused reductions in birth cohort size of approximately one-quarter 18 months after Zika infection risk peaked but 10 months after public health messages advocated childbearing delay. The evidence is consistent with small but not statistically detectable biological reductions in fecundity, as well as large strategic changes in reproductive behavior to temporally align childbearing with reduced risk to infant health. The behavioral effects are larger for more-educated and older women, which may reflect facilitated access to information and to family planning services within high-risk, mosquito-infested urban locations as well as perceptions about the opportunity costs of risks to pregnancy and infant survival.

The relationship between mental health and social disadvantage in low and middle income countries is poorly understood. Our study contributes the first population-level analysis of mental health disparities in India, where the two marginalized groups that we study constitute a population larger than that of the United States. Applying two complementary empirical strategies to data on 10,125 adults interviewed by the World Health Organisation's Survey of Global Ageing and Adult Health (WHO-SAGE), we document and standardize gaps in self-reported mental health between the dominant social group (higher caste Hindus) and two marginalized social groups (Scheduled Castes and Muslims). We find that differences in socioeconomic status cannot fully explain the large disparities in mental health that we document, especially for Muslims. Our results highlight the need for research to understand the causes and consequences of mental health disparities in India, and for policies to move beyond redistribution and address discrimination against Scheduled Castes and Muslims.

Older adults’ engagement in various prosocial activities is a salient question in present-day societies that aim to promote active ageing. Using population-based data of older Finns (n = 2,184) from 2012, we examined their prosocial activities and investigated whether providing informal help (i.e. practical help, financial support, or personal care) to relatives and friends is associated with participation in volunteering and charity, respectively. Overall, five per cent of the participants provided all examined forms of informal help and volunteered, 16 per cent provided two types of help and volunteered, and 23 per cent provided one type of help and volunteered. In addition, nine per cent of the participants provided all types of informal help and made charitable donations, 33 per cent provided two types of help and made charitable donations, and 54 per cent provided one type of help and made charitable donations. Practical help and care channelled outside the household were associated with an increased probability of volunteering, although they were not associated with the probability of making charitable donations. Practical help, financial support, and personal care provided to friends were particularly important predictors of volunteering and charity. These results are discussed in the context of the role overload and role extension hypotheses.

This paper investigates national and state-level trends in the adjusted marriage rate in the United States spanning nearly 140 years. While dramatic shifts in American family throughout the 20th century is a widely touted phrase, the trends in the geographic variation in marriage rates remains unknown. Using data from numerous Government publications we present visual representations of the adjusted marriage rate in the U.S. over a long historical time span (1880-2019) disaggregating the marriage rate by state. Our goal is to highlight both spatial (at the state-level) and temporal variation in marriage patterns in the U.S.

While much progress has been made in understanding the demographic determinants of mortality in the United States using individual survey data and aggregate tabulations, the lack of population-level register data is a barrier to further advances in mortality research. With the release of Social Security application (SS-5), claim, and death records, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has created a new administrative data resource for researchers studying mortality. We introduce the Berkeley Unified Numident Mortality Database (BUNMD), a cleaned and harmonized version of these records. This publicly available dataset provides researchers access to over 49 million individual-level mortality records with demographic covariates and fine geographic detail, allowing for high-resolution mortality research.

In this study, we apply a framework that allows a flexible approach to understanding and evaluating mismatch in partner markets and studies three decades of data on the complete Danish population aged 25-45. We evaluate the importance of including people in cohabiting unions as being “off the market” as well as allowing people searching for a partner to obtain one from existing relationships. In doing so, we document the key role of considering both cohabitation and market reentry, as well as document an increasingly mismatched partner market for women driven primarily by changes in demand, whereas men experience declining supply due to an increasingly geographically polarized market, while their demand also changes. In addition, we show that the probability of obtaining a partner from an existing relationship increases the more mismatched a partner market people face. Our findings are relevant for understanding current processes of fertility decline and rise in single living.

Extensive literature theorizes the role of re-partnering on cohort fertility and whether union dissolution can be an engine for fertility. A large share of higher-order unions is non-marital cohabitations. Yet, most previous completed cohort fertility studies on the topic analyze marital unions only and none have measured cohabitations using population-level data. We use Finnish register data to enumerate every birth, marriage, and cohabitation from ages 18-46 in the 1969–1972 birth cohorts, and analyze the relationship between the number of unions and cohort fertility for men and women using Poisson regression. We show that re-partnering is driven by cohabitations. Re-marriage is positively associated with cohort fertility, compared to individuals in a single intact marriage. However, when measured using marriages as well as non-marital cohabitations, re-partnering is negatively associated with fertility, compared to individuals in a single intact union. This negative association increases with socioeconomic status. “Serial cohabitation” is a strong predictor of low fertility. Men see a slight “re-marriage premium” in fertility and a (non-marital) “re-partnering penalty,” compared to women. Thus, re-partnering is likely not an efficient engine for fertility. Further, marriage and cohabitation are far from indistinguishable in a country often described as a second demographic transition forerunner.

Background: Abortion is a difficult-to-measure behavior with extensive survey underreporting, which compromises the ability to study and monitor abortion. The purpose of this study was to improve our understanding of how women interpret and respond to survey items asking if they have ever had an abortion. Methods: We developed multiple new questions hypothesized to improve abortion reporting, using approaches that aim to clarify which experiences to report as an induced abortion; reduce the stigma and sensitivity of induced abortion; reduce the sense of intrusiveness of asking about abortion; and increase the motivation to report. We conducted cognitive interviews with cisgender women aged 18-49 in two US states (N=64) to iteratively assess these new approaches and questions for improving abortion reporting. Results: Our findings suggest that including abortion as part of a list of other sexual and reproductive health services, asking a yes/no question about lifetime experience of abortion instead of asking about number of abortions, and developing an improved introduction to abortion questions may help to elicit more accurate survey reports. Conclusions: Opportunities exist to improve survey measurement of abortion. Reducing underreporting of abortion in surveys has the potential to improve sexual and reproductive health research that relies on pregnancy histories.

How much it matters for your income development what generation you happen to be born? We answer this question by using registers of the total population, we study generational income inequality during 1970–2018 and, for men and women in Finland. We follow the income trajectories of the cohorts born in 1920–1983 over their adult life course and observed, how certain structural factors explain differences in income trajectories. Our study expands state-of-the-art knowledge, as previous research has often bypassed the question of how much generational income differences explains of populations total income inequalities and what factors may explain the different generational income trajectories. Results show that overall generational income differences explained quarter for women and 6 percent for men total income inequality. Each successive cohort until 1980s had a higher average income trajectory. However, generation born in the 1980s has been falling behind. For both men and women, age structure and education were the most important factors associated with income inequality. On contrary to previous findings on Nordic welfare state, our results also indicate that, generational income trajectories are affected by economic shocks.

Despite established recommended standard definitions, measures, and methods by the UN Washington Group on Disability Statistics and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) to assess dimensions of disability, national censuses vary widely in the questions used to identify people with disabilities. Although many seek to conform ex-ante to ICF definitions, they also deviate from this basic framework in different ways. This complicates ex-post harmonization and standardization for cross-national comparisons of disabilityprevalence and outcomes influenced by disability status, such as labor market participation. Addressing these issues, this study uses IPUMS International Census microdata since 2,000 to examine disability mea- surement across 65 countries. We find that definitions, terminology, measurement, and instructions to both respondents and enumerators mat- ter for understanding disability prevalence cross-nationally. For instance, questions that included potentially stigmatizing language were associ- ated with lower rates of disability reporting, but questions that listed spe- cific limitations were associated with higher rates. Beyond disability, our findings also speak more broadly to ongoing challenges in survey har- monization for cross-national comparison.

As primary health care providers, family physicians play a critical role in Canada’s health care system by providing first-level contact for patients and acting as advocates for preventative medicine. Due to their essential role in population health, public health practitioners are concerned about temporal trends surrounding family physician visits. This study uses eight cycles of the Canadian Community Health Survey, a nationally representative survey, to conducing an age-period-cohort analysis with the bounding method, while controlling for sex and race. Most notably, we discover a declining cohort trend indicating that later cohorts are less likely to visit a family doctor over a 12-month period. These results suggest that health promotion policies surrounding family physician use should not only be targeted towards middle and older-aged adults who experience declining health, as the cohort effect implies that a portion of health care avoidance behaviour is molded in youth and young adulthood.

Demographic theory aims at explaining how population systems regulate themselves given available resources. Population ethics is concerned with demography in the sense that the analytical objects of interest are births, deaths, and populations. However, demographic theory which explores theoretically when, how and why populations grow, based on empirically observed patterns, has up until now played a minor role in population ethics. Similarly, debates about population dynamics among demographers have seldom been concerned with ideas and concepts in population ethics. In this manuscript, I will give a brief outline of how population size, population growth, and welfare mutually affect each other. Theories on the endogeneity between population size, population growth, and welfare will be referred to as demographic theory. I will give a particular focus on how population growth responds with respect to welfare, as welfare, utility, well-being, and happiness are important concepts in population ethics. A key concept in demographic theory is population homeostasis (the dynamics of a system which maintains a population at a steady population size, or growth rate), in particular resource dependent homeostasis. I will also discuss demographic theory in relation to historical and future demographic change. This working paper was later published in Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics, and is available at https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/at5pj/

The opioid epidemic has had devastating effects for the health and wellbeing of the U.S. population. However, we know little about how it has affected the structure of families where children are raised. Using the 5 percent sample of the 2000 Census, 2005-2018 American Community Survey (ACS) data and restricted Vital Statistics we assess the effect of the opioid epidemic at the local level on the rates of children living under different types of family arrangements: two married parents, two cohabiting parents, mother only, father only, or another configuration. Local fixed-effects models show that a greater intensity of the opioid epidemic, as measured by a higher opioid-overdose death rate, is associated with a lower rate of children living with two married parents, and a higher rate of children living with two cohabiting parents, with only a father, and with adults other than their parents. The opioid epidemic appears to increase the rates of children living in family structures that tend to be less stable, which has potential long term implications for the wellbeing of future generations.

Sociological research has established the greater exposure of African Americans from all income groups to disadvantaged environments compared to whites, but the traditional focus in studies of neighborhood stratification obscures heterogeneity within racial/ethnic groups in residential attainment over time. Also obscured are the moderating influences of broader social changes on the life-course and the experiences of Latinos, a large and growing presence in American cities. We address these issues by examining group-based trajectory models of residential neighborhood disadvantage among whites, Blacks, and Latinos in a multi-cohort longitudinal research design of over 1,000 children from Chicago as they transitioned to adulthood over the last quarter century. We find dynamic consistency among whites and dynamic heterogeneity among nonwhites in exposure to residential disadvantage, especially Blacks and those born in the 1980s compared to the 1990s. Racial and cohort differences are not accounted for by early-life characteristics that predict long-term attainment. Inequalities by race in trajectories of neighborhood disadvantage are thus at once more stable and more dynamic than previous research suggests, and they are modified by broader social changes. These findings offer insights on the changing pathways by which neighborhood racial inequality is produced.

Against a backdrop of extreme racial health inequality, the 1918 influenza pandemic resulted in a striking reduction of non-White to White influenza and pneumonia mortality disparities in United States cities. We provide the most complete account to date of these reduced racial disparities, showing that they were unexpectedly uniform across cities. Linking data from multiple sources, we then examine potential explanations for this finding, including city-level sociodemographic factors such as segregation, implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions, racial differences in exposure to the milder spring 1918 “herald wave,” and racial differences in early-life influenza exposures, resulting in differential immunological vulnerability to the 1918 flu. While we find little evidence for the first three explanations, we offer suggestive evidence that racial variation in childhood exposure to the 1889–1892 influenza pandemic may have shrunk racial disparities in 1918. We also highlight the possibility that differential behavioral responses to the herald wave may have protected non-White urban populations. By providing a comprehensive description and examination of racial inequality in mortality during the 1918 pandemic, we offer a framework for understanding disparities in infectious disease mortality that considers interactions between the natural histories of particular microbial agents and the social histories of those they infect.

Objectives Several studies have shown that retired older adults volunteer more than their working counterparts. However, there is a lack of research detecting whether the transition to retirement increases the frequency of volunteering over time and the extent to which this potential effect of retirement varies between sociodemographic groups.Methods We used seven waves of data from the longitudinal Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, collected between 2011 and 2018 from 19 countries. Within-person (or panel fixed-effect) regression models, which considered individual variations and person-specific changes over time, were conducted.Results Transition to retirement over time was associated with an increased frequency of volunteering among older Europeans. In addition, transition to retirement was more strongly associated with volunteering in countries with higher overall rates of volunteering, among more highly educated individuals, and among more religious people.Discussion Our findings supported the impact of time substitution and the centrality of social norms in shaping individual behavior. However, we were unable to find support for an influence of social tie replacement. Overall, transition to retirement tends to open up new ways to organize everyday life and increases the time spent volunteering among older Europeans.

Lifespan variation is a key metric of mortality that describes both individual uncertaintyabout the length of life and heterogeneity in population health. We propose a novel andtimely lifespan variation measure, which we call the Cross-sectional Average Inequality in Lifespan. This new index provides an alternative perspective on the analysis of lifespan inequality by combining the mortality histories of all cohorts present in a cross-sectional approach. We demonstrate how differences in the Cross-sectional Average Inequality in Lifespan measure can be decomposed between populations by age and cohort to explore the compression or expansion of mortality in a cohort perspective. We apply these new methods using data from ten low-mortality countries from 1879 to 2013. The Cross-sectional Average Inequality in Lifespan measure reveals greater uncertainty in the timing of death than the period life table-based indices of variation indicate. Also, country rankings of lifespan inequality vary considerably between period and cross-sectional measures. These differences open intriguing questions as to which temporal dimension is the most relevant to individuals when considering the uncertainty in the timing of death in planning their life courses.

This article uses Swedish register data to study the labour market experiences of radical right-wing candidates. We look at different measures of economic insecurity (labour market participation trajectories, experience of unemployment in social networks, relative decline of men’s income and relative growth of jobs for foreign-born workers vis-a-vis natives) and examine whether they are predictors of candidates running for the Sweden Democrats, the main radical right-wing party in Sweden, as opposed to another mainstream political party. We find some confirmation for the notion that radical right-wing candidates are citizens’ candidates (Bó, Finan, Folke, Persson and Rickne, 2018) as far as labour market experiences of radical right-wing candidates are markedly different from mainstream party candidates. Those with turbulent or out-of-labour market labour market trajectories are much more likely to run for the Sweden Democrats, as opposed to other parties. Additionally, the same is true for candidates embedded in social networks with higher levels of unemployment, while working in high skilled industry markedly lowers probability of running for the Sweden Democrats, especially for male candidates with low educational attainment. We find no confirmation for decline in relative status of men and mixed results for ethnic threat hypothesis.

Investing in voluntary family planning services and commodities is a cost-effective intervention for socio-economic development. Every dollar spent on family planning results in reductions in child and maternal deaths, returns in savings in other development areas, and environmental benefits. Investments in family planning yield demonstrated social and economic returns in all sectors - food, water, health, and economic development. Our analysis suggests that achieving universal access to contraception could contribute in the long term to achieving some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We applied the Family Planning-Sustainable Development Goals (FP-SDGs) Model that quantifies the benefits voluntary contraceptive use offers for realizing 13 of the SDG indicators which are related to 7 out of the 17 SDGs Goals. The model unravelling the multi-sectoral benefits of contraceptive use and shows that family planning can accelerate progress across the 7 SDG. Further, it shows that family planning does not only empower women to choose the number, timing, and spacing of their pregnancies but also touches on many multisectoral determinants vital to sustainable development. We show that in the case of Pakistan, without universal access to family planning and reproductive health, the impact and effectiveness of other interventions will be less, will cost more, and will take longer to achieve. In the end, we put some key recommendations to prioritize family planning as one of the strategic national development investments.

We test the effectiveness of a link-tracing sampling approach—network sampling with memory (NSM)—to recruit samples of rare immigrant populations with an application among Chinese immigrants in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. NSM uses the population network revealed by data from the survey to improve the efficiency of link-tracing sampling and has been shown to substantially reduce design effects in simulated sampling. Our goals are to (1) show that it is possible to recruit a probability sample of a locally rare immigrant group using NSM and achieve high response rates; (2) demonstrate the feasibility of the collection and benefits of new forms of network data that transcend kinship networks in existing surveys and can address unresolved questions about the role of social networks in migration decisions, the maintenance of transnationalism, and the process of social incorporation; and (3) test the accuracy of the NSM approach for recruiting immigrant samples by comparison with the American Community Survey. Our results indicate feasibility, high performance, cost-effectiveness, and accuracy of the NSM approach to sample immigrants for studies of local immigrant communities. This approach can also be extended to recruit multisite samples of immigrants at origin and destination.

Researchers generally recognize that racial identification may shift over the life course. However, there is less consensus about the prevalence of these shifts. Previous estimates suggest as many as 6% of Americans shift their racial identity. Using administrative data on Social Security applications from 1984 to 2007, we quantify the magnitude and direction of shifts in racial and ethnic self-identification among Black, White, Asian, American Indian, and Hispanic members of the “Greatest Generation,” those born between 1901 and 1927 (N = 410,388). Approximately 9,274 (2.3%) persons in this dataset changed their racial or Hispanic identity, with distinct patterns of change for racial-ethnic subgroups. Overall, the most common shift was from a non-White identity to a non-Hispanic White identity. We then link to the 1940 Census to investigate whether social status in youth and young adulthood predicts a shift in identity in later life, and we find a positive and significant association between socioeconomic status in early life and a shift from non-White to non-Hispanic White identity. These systematic patterns would be unlikely if these shifts were due entirely to measurement error. We conclude the prevalence of racial fluidity is itself contingent, varying across time and cohort with response to racial climate, events in greater society, and social position.

This study examines the interplay between race/ethnicity and educational attainment in shaping completed fertility in the United States for women born 1961-80. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth, 2006-17, we apply multilevel, multiprocess hazard models to account for unobserved heterogeneity and to estimate (1) cohort total fertility rates, (2) parity progression ratios, and (3) parity-specific fertility timing, for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic women by educational attainment. We find that compared with their white counterparts, fertility was higher among Black and Hispanic women with less than high school education. However, among college-educated women, fertility levels were lowest among Black women and highest among Hispanic women. The difference in fertility between college-educated Black and white women is driven mainly by the smaller proportion of Black mothers having second births. We find little evidence that the observed racial/ethnic disparities in fertility levels by educational attainment are driven by differences in fertility timing.

The spread and transmission dynamics of directly transmitted airborne pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, are fundamentally determined by in-person contact patterns. Reliable quantitative estimates of contact patterns are critical to modeling and reducing the spread of directly transmitted infectious diseases. While national-level contact data are available in many countries, including the United States, local-level estimates of age-specific contact patterns are key since disease dynamics and public health policy vary by geography. However, collecting contact data for each state would require a very large sample and be prohibitively expensive. To overcome this challenge, we develop a flexible model to estimate age-specific contact patterns at the subnational level using national-level interpersonal contact data. Our model is based on dynamic multilevel regression with poststratification. We apply this approach to a national sample of interpersonal contact data collected by the Berkeley Interpersonal Contact Study (BICS). Results illustrate important state-level variation in levels and trends of contacts across the US.

This paper examines the effects of population growth and decline on county-level income inequality in the rural United States from 1980 to 2016. Findings from previous research have shown that population growth is positively associated with income inequality. However, these studies are largely motivated by theories of urbanization and growth in metropolitan areas, and do not explicitly test for differences between the impacts of population growth and decline. Examining the effects of both forms of population change on income inequality is particularly important in rural counties of the United States, the majority of which are experiencing population decline. We analyze county-level data (N=11,320 county-decades) from the U.S. Decennial Census and American Community Survey, applying fixed-effects regression models to estimate the respective effects of population growth and decline on income inequality within rural counties. We find that both forms of population change have significant effects on income inequality relative to stable growth. Population decline is associated with increases in income inequality, while population growth is marginally associated with decreases in inequality. These relationships are consistent across a variety of model specifications, including models that account for counties' employment, sociodemographic, and ethno-racial composition. We also find that the relationship between income inequality and population change varies by counties' geographic region, baseline level of inequality, and baseline population size, suggesting that the links between population change and income inequality are not uniform across rural America.

While evidence suggests a durable relationship between redlining and population health, we currently lack an empirical account of how this historical act of racialized violence produced contemporary inequities. In this paper, we use a mediation framework to evaluate how redlining grades influenced later life expectancy and the degree to which contemporary racial disparities in life expectancy between Black working-class neighborhoods and White professional-class neighborhoods can be explained by past Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) mapping. Life expectancy gaps between differently graded tracts are driven by economic isolation and disparate property valuation which developed within these areas in subsequent decades. Still, only a small percent of a total disparity between contemporary Black and White neighborhoods is explained by HOLC grades. We discuss the role of HOLC maps in analyses of structural racism and health, positioning them as only one feature of a larger public–private project conflating race with financial risk. Policy implications include not only targeting resources to formerly redlined neighborhoods but also the larger project of dismantling racist theories of value that are deeply embedded in the political economy of place.

Over the last two decades, cycling in Germany has increased by more than 40%. This paper analyses how this overall increase is broken down by group, characterised by residence (rural and smaller towns vs. medium-sized and larger cities) and education (high vs. low). It analyses (1) how the composition of the population changes according to these groups, (2) how cycling behaviour develops within these groups, and (3) how the changes in composition and behaviour shape the overall volume of cycling. Data on mobility behaviour comes from the large-scale, representative German Mobility Panel from 1996 to 2018, and the analytical sample covers information on more than 28,000 persons over approximately 730,000 reported trips. Data on changes in population composition comes from the German Socio-Economic Panel. Results show that the increase in cycling is unbalanced and largely a consequence of highly educated people in cities who now cycle twice as much and whose share of the population has doubled. This reveals that the cycling boom is bypassing important parts of the population, which limits the contribution of cycling to sustainability goals. Furthermore, the uneven evolution of cycling amplifies social inequalities in finances and health. Finally, this paper shows that increased cycling comes not only from changing behaviour within groups, but also from altered population composition. The most impactful compositional shift is the increasing level of education, which will likely continue to boost cycling.

Migration processes, especially the migration of young people and labor resources, are among the important factors that affect the socio-economic situation both in the country as a whole and in its regions.The State pays considerable attention to migration issues. First of all, to neutralize the negative consequences and enhance the positive effect obtained as a result of migration processes, a broad system of national and interstate regulation has been created. However, the analysis shows that mechanisms for regulating youth migration, approaches to regulating educational and labor migration, and in general, migration processes in Kazakhstan need to be refined and improved.

This paper studies the association between south-to-north internal geographical mobility and social mobility in Italy. Two issued are analysed: the association between migration and social mobility pathways, comparing the movers with the stayers, i.e. those who did not experienced any episode of geographical mobility; b) whether the effect of south-to-north mobility changes according to gender and education. Analyses are based on the Longitudinal Survey on Italian Households (ILHS) and use Mobility tables and Linear Regression Panel Models with random effects. Results shown that the social mobility of internal migrants are characterized by three main pathways: a) to the urban working class, which concerned the southerners originally from the lower classes, especially the children of peasants and laborers; b) to the white collars, which instead mainly concerned the bourgeois and the white-collar middle class; c) mixed pathways, which involved people from the petty bourgeoisie and the urban working class. Results also shown a gender divide, where a positive effect of geographical mobility is found for men and a negative one for women. Finally, the negative effect among women is confirmed only when they are lower educated.

This study uses demographic methods to describe ethnoracial and educational inequality in the cumulative risk of homicide death and life lost to violence in the United States. If age-specific homicide rates were to continue at 2018–2019 levels, more than 1 in 19 Black males without a high school diploma would die by homicide. In contrast, 1 in 152 White males without a high school diploma and 1 in 233 Black males with a bachelor's degree would be violently killed. Among Black males without a high school diploma, homicide led to a decrease in life expectancy at ages 15–19 of more than two years. The impact of U.S. violence on the life expectancy of socially marginalized people exceeds the population impact of all causes of death except heart disease and cancer.

Common and long-running concern across the world relates to the impact of increasing population aging on health care utilization and more evidence about the inequality in health care utilization by older adults in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is necessary for assessing the capacity of health care systems in LMICs to align with the universal health coverage agenda. In this paper, using data from WHO Study on Global Ageing and adult health (SAGE) in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russian Federation and South Africa, the multi-national magnitude in inequality of health care use is measured by concentration index in each country. The results show that a pro-rich inequality in health care utilization existed: China Mexico and Ghana show up with a high degree of inequality in outpatient service utilization; most of the countries show up with a low level of inequality for inpatient service (except China). Then especially India, but also Ghana, South Africa, and China, show up with a high degree of inequality and inequity in chronic diseases service utilization. However, there doesn’t appear to be one system characteristic of inequality in health care utilization since these six countries all have very diverse characteristics with different stages of the demographic and epidemiological transitions. The decomposition shows that income itself is the most important but not the only driving factor. And the distribution of education, health insurance, and urban/rural residents are the prime other contributors to health inequality. Also, this paper shows that inequalities for non-communicative diseases service utilization in LMICs produce big challenges, which underlines the role of prevention and health promotion throughout the life course to help reduce the burden due to non-communicable diseases. This paper provides a number of new insights on population aging’s impact on health care utilization in low- and middle-income countries.

In this research note, I estimate one component of the mortality impact of denying all wanted induced abortions in the U.S. This estimate quantifies the magnitude of an increase in pregnancy-related death which would occur solely due to the greater mortality risk of continuing pregnancy to term compared to having a legal induced abortion. Using published statistics on pregnancy-related mortality ratios, births, and abortions, I estimate U.S. pregnancy-related deaths by race/ethnicity before and in first and subsequent years of a total abortion ban. I estimate deaths after a total abortion ban by assuming all induced abortions are denied, assuming each abortion denied averts 0.8 births, and increasing exposure to pregnancy-related mortality accordingly. I find that in the first year of ban, estimated pregnancy-related deaths would increase from 675 to 724 (49 additional deaths, 7% increase), and in subsequent years to 815 (140 additional deaths, 21% increase). Non-Hispanic Black women would experience the greatest increase in deaths (33% increase in subsequent years). Estimated pregnancy-related deaths would increase for all race/ethnicities examined. Denying all wanted induced abortions in US would increase pregnancy-related mortality substantially, even if unsafe abortion does not increase.

This paper examines a half century of trends in family attitudes and beliefs in the United States, including attitudes towards gender, marriage, childbearing, cohabitation, sex outside marriage, divorce, and same-sex relations. These trends are viewed through the lens of developmental idealism. We also describe how the developmental idealism framework applies to Western contexts generally and the United States specifically. We trace family attitudes from the 1960s through 2018 using four data sources: Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, Monitoring the Future, General Social Survey, and International Social Science Project. We find profound and largely consistent changes in Americans’ attitudes. We argue these changes can be understood as the expansion of developmental idealism in the United States. Americans increasingly endorsed family attributes long understood as modern under developmental idealism, as well as attributes more recently viewed as modern through extensions of freedom and equality. At the same time, sizable majorities remained committed to marriage and having children. While Americans increasingly supported all individuals’ freedom to choose among a diversity of family behaviors, most continued to view marriage and children favorably in their own lives.

Ethnische räumliche Segregation in Großstädten stellt eine mögliche Dimension der sozialen Abgrenzung zwischen Bevölkerungsgruppen dar und kann weitere Dimensionen der Ungleichheit in anderen Bereichen der Gesellschaft beeinflussen. Aufgrund unterschiedlicher räumlicher Einteilungen ist es oft jedoch schwierig das Ausmaß an Segregation über Stadtgrenzen hinweg zu vergleichen. Basierend auf Daten des Zensus 2011 verwendet dieser Beitrag räumliche Segregationsmaße auf verschiedenen geographischen Ebenen um so einen vergleichenden Überblick über die räumliche Segregation und deren Formen in Deutschland zu geben. Die Ergebnisse zeigen erhebliche Variation in der Stärke der räumlichen Trennung von Minderheiten. Außerdem verdeutlicht der Beitrag, dass verschiedene deutsche Städte unterschiedliche Muster der Segregation aufweisen. Während manche Städte besonders auf der kleinräumigen geographischen Ebene segregiert sind, erfolgt die Trennung in anderen Städten auf einer großräumigen Ebene. Dadurch zeigt der Beitrag, dass räumliche Segregation auch in Deutschland unterschiedliche Muster und Dimensionen annimmt, die mit unterschiedlichen Folgen und Ursachen verbunden sein können.

The second surge of COVID-19 had a large mortality impact in India. However, there are few reliable estimates of the magnitude of this impact for India’s poorer states. This note presents results of a small-scale phone survey in Bihar which interviewed a random sample of beneficiaries of the state’s Public Distribution System. This pilot survey was conducted in June 2021 and asked more than 500 respondents about any deaths in their household since April 1, 2021.We observe an annualized Crude Death Rate of 24.3 deaths per 1,000 [95% CI 13.0-37.4] during the second surge of the pandemic in Bihar. The observed death rate is more than four times baseline mortality (5.8 deaths per 1,000 per year). The probability that mortality during the second surge was at least thrice the level of baseline mortality is 0.88. This large surge in mortality warrants an urgent public discussion on state priorities in Bihar. It also suggests the viability of and need for continuous large-scale mortality surveys.

Identifying the linkages between the feelings of social isolation and its socio-demographic, residential, and psychosocial correlates is of major importance to the healthcare system today. Using data from the Canadian Survey Perspective Survey Series 6 (CPSS6) conducted by Statistics Canada, the purpose of this study is to explore these linkages during the second year of the pandemic in Canada. Five levels of social isolation were examined in conjunction with 17 other socio-demographic and psychosocial characteristics of 3,941 respondents to the survey. The study suggests that about three out of four Canadians (75%) have experienced some feeling of social isolation at some point during the pandemic. The most severe form comprised 11% of the total population. In the context of a generalized cross-tabular data analysis, Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) detected two major dimensions underlying the data: mental health distress and time duration. These dimensions represented approximately 61% of the inertia or unexplained variation in the data. An examination of the combinations of variable categories revealed that the highest perceived isolation levels were found among young individuals, females, individuals who were single, those who received medical help during the pandemic, and those living in low-rise apartments in urban areas. The lowest levels of perceived social isolation were found among older individuals, rural residents, those who were married and/or reported excellent mental health. Not all individuals who experienced higher levels of mental distress, however, felt social isolation. The findings of the study could be useful when designing public health campaigns aimed at reducing social isolation by providing helpful alternatives to affected populations.

Recent reports have suggested that falling fertility in the US since the 2008 recession is being driven by women with advantaged status in the labor market taking advantage of career opportunities. This paper takes issue with that conclusion. Although high incomes are associated with lower fertility in general, both in the cross section and over time (within and between countries), economic crises also lead to lower fertility. I offer a new descriptive analysis using data from the American Community Survey for 2000-2019. In the U.S. case, the fertility decline was widespread after the 2008 recession, but most concentrated among younger women. Although women with above average education have long had lower birth rates, the analysis shows that birth rates fell most for women in states with higher than average unemployment rates, especially among those with below average education. This is consistent with evidence that birth rates are falling, and births delayed, by economic insecurity and hardship.