Demographic Research

Background: Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have limited evidence of adult mortality due to a lack of reliable data. We estimated social (caste and religion) and economic (wealth quintile) inequality in adult mortality using three rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS 1998–1999, NFHS 2015–2016, and NFHS 2019–2021). Methods: We estimated the probability of death in the 15–59 a…

Background: Much attention has been paid recently to the large decline in period fertility in many countries since 2010. In the Nordic countries and England and Wales much of it can be attributed to the decline in first-birth rates, suggesting higher childlessness. Objective: The aim of this paper is to quantify the contribution of childlessness to changes in cohort completed fertility between th…

Background: Period lifespan variability is sometimes interpreted as an indicator of lifespan uncertainty for individual cohort members. Is this an admissible interpretation for living cohort members, given that future death rates are not precisely known? Objective: To answer this question, we express individual lifespan uncertainty as a function of variation in ages at death in a cohort lifetable…

Background: China’s continuous decline in births has attracted scholarly and policy attention. However, total fertility rates are affected by tempo effects and may not accurately reflect the underlying fertility level. Objective: We examine cohort trends in childlessness and the number of children ever born (CEB) among Chinese women, focusing on fertility postponement, recuperation, and the effec…

Background: Fertility has been decreasing in Canada since the 2008 financial crisis, as it has elsewhere. A key question is whether fertility has fallen because people cannot have the children they want, or because they want fewer children. Objective: We address the change in fertility intentions of Canadian women over the recent decades. Methods: We use data from seven surveys conducted between …

Background: The rise in human longevity has brought increased academic attention to centenarians, a rare population group often subject to age misreporting. Objective: This paper compares the census counts of centenarians in Argentina in 2001, 2010, and 2022 with estimates derived from indirect demographic methods and alternative data sources. Methods: For the indirect estimation of the centenari…

Background: As more adults assume caregiving responsibilities for their aging parents, a key question emerges: Does coresidence increase financial strain for adult child caregivers? Objective: To examine whether coresiding with an oldest-old parent (aged 80+) is associated with higher financial strain among adult child caregivers. Methods: This study uses data from the Hispanic Established Popula…

Background: The number of centenarians worldwide has increased considerably since 1950. However, most demographic research on population longevity has focused on high-income countries. As a result, little is known about centenarians in low- and middle-income countries, such as Mexico. Objective: This study assesses the quality of demographic data sources on centenarians in Mexico over time, estim…

Background: Family migration shapes early childhood development (ECD), but the link between parental voluntary versus forced migration experiences and ECD remains underexplored. Germany, with its diverse migration streams, offers an opportunity to investigate this interrelation. Objective: This study examines the link between parental migration status and ECD of children aged 2–4 and investigates…

Background: The fifth United Nations sustainable development goal calls for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. However, progress toward this goal remains difficult to assess, as empowerment is multidimensional, context-specific, and challenging to quantify. Objective: This study develops a framework to examine how women’s empowerment manifests across intersecting domains …

Background: We take for granted that there are data on critical topics such as health and mortality, fertility, and social processes across the globe. For over 50 years, the World Fertility Survey program (1972–1984) and its successor, The Demographic and Health Surveys Program (1984–present), filled in essential gaps in human knowledge. Objective: I interviewed Tom Pullum to better understand th…

Background: China has witnessed a continuous rise of couple migration and family migration. These migration developments possibly signal individuals’ changing considerations of marital and parenthood responsibilities in their migration decisions over time. Objective: We focus on one specific type of migration, first labor migration, and examine the gender and birth cohort patterns of how marriage…

Background: Quebec has experienced sustained immigration alongside profound transformations in family trajectories, reshaping residential needs across the life course. While prior research has mainly focused on synchronous links between family transitions and residential mobility, less attention has been paid to the combined role of anticipatory and lagged dynamics, particularly in relation to im…

Background: Research has long identified class differences in the development of child behavioral difficulties; however, adjudicating between competing subcultural and resource-based explanations has been problematic because of the difficulty in separating mechanisms from pre-existing risk factors. Objective: We use variation in financial strain, experienced by households in Ireland during the Gr…

Background: The economic burden of educational competition is widely recognized. However, its potential correlation with family size remains largely unexplored, particularly how this correlation varies across birth parities and is associated with declining fertility rates. Objective: We investigate how the intensity of educational competition is associated with fertility outcomes at the household…

Background: Family resilience foregrounds personal and relational transformations that might help families overcome adversity. Yet why and from whom resilience is required is often overlooked. Economic downturns are exemplary sites to examine these questions. Objective: I study children’s prosocial development and caregiving as interrelated expressions of family resilience in households affected …

Background: In countries with limited civil registration, household surveys do not include questions on HIV-related mortality. Objective: We aim to test whether accurate data on the HIV status of the deceased siblings of survey respondents could be collected during household surveys conducted in low- and middle-income countries. Methods: We added HIV questions to the standard module on adult and …

Objective: To provide an in-depth examination of the birth squeeze, the alteration of male and female birth rates by the age-sex composition of the population. Methods: Mathematical analyses using reasonable simplifying assumptions are made to find male and female total fertility rates (TFRs), and from them an index of the magnitude of the birth squeeze under exponential, linear, and sinusoidal b…

Background: Life expectancy in China has been increasing in recent decades, but regional inequalities persist. Unbalanced regional development has resulted in large-scale population movement. Over time, the changing regional distribution of the population changes the proportion of the population exposed to different regional mortality levels. Objective: The increase in national life expectancy ca…

Background: The postponement of first childbirth is a well-established trend across many high-income countries. While delayed childbearing often reduces the likelihood of having additional children, some women compensate by shortening the interval before a second birth. However, the capacity to recuperate fertility after a late start varies, particularly according to educational attainment, and t…