Background: In Europe, 10%‒40% of adults experience an unintended or sooner-than-intended birth. However, European research on family planning need and use is scarce. Objective: The Generations and Gender Survey is a cross-national panel survey collected in low-fertility settings in Europe, Asia, and South America. This paper demonstrates how to use this dataset to calculate family planning need and

Background: Several theoretical models argue that divorce risks depend on an individual’s level of religiosity and the level of religiosity in this individual’s spatial context. However, it remains unclear whether the same relationship holds for couples and whether the strength of the effect of couple-level religiosity depends on the level of religiosity in the context (a so-called cross-level interaction

Background: The social networks of people play a prominent role in theories on fertility. Investigating how networks shape behaviour is hard, because of the difficulty in measuring (large) networks among representative samples. Therefore, comprehensive studies of the variation in the structure and composition of networks and their impact on fertility outcomes are lacking. Objective: I aim to, first

Background: Large-scale cross-country comparisons of children’s physical custody (which parent the child lives with after separation) are dated and limited in the age range of children considered. Objective: We document the level of sole and joint physical custody (JPC, both equal and unequal) for children in European countries using data from 2021. Methods: This article uses a new module on the living

Background: Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic a host of countries saw drastic fertility declines, followed by a variety of fertility patterns. It remains unclear whether these initial baby busts have been recuperated, and, if so, whether the recuperation occurred homogenously across maternal age groups and parity categories. Objective: We assess period fertility recuperation as the cumulative

Background: Growth in cohabiting unions and non-marital childbearing sits at the core of research on the second demographic transition and related discussions of family bifurcation and children’s diverging destinies. Objective: How should we think about these two highly influential and purportedly universal depictions of family change in low-fertility countries where the link between marriage and childbearing

Background: In 2015 Mexico set a goal to halve its adolescent fertility rate and eliminate childbearing among girls 14 years and younger, but the ambitious goal is severely off track. National estimates show stagnation, and while implementation is targeted at the municipal level, little is known about adolescent fertility in Mexican municipalities. Objective: This study estimates trends in subnational

Background: Individual lifespans differ. Some of those differences are due to heterogeneity, some to stochasticity. Some of the heterogeneity is due to socioeconomic, physiological, or environmental differences; some to unobserved latent factors. All of these are, from time to time, called inequality. Objective: This paper aims to clarify the relations between heterogeneity, stochasticity, inequality

Background: Existing studies investigating children’s living arrangements after parental separation and geographic distance to the nonresident parent focus primarily on the situation shortly after separation. Little is known about how children’s residence with and distance to parents evolve with time elapsed since separation. Objective: We investigate for the first 10 years following parental separation

Background: Multidimensional issues confront the use of standard verbal autopsies (SVAs), such as the WHO’s verbal autopsy standards and the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium’s gold standard verbal autopsy, to improve the mortality data performance of civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Objective: This paper attempts an inclusive

Background: Children are born and grow up in households, where they receive essential care, including time, socio-psychological support, and economic resources. Children’s immediate environment, captured by household structure, changes over time. Objective: We evaluate the role of dynamic household structure in the risk of child death in southern and eastern Africa. Methods: We use longitudinal data

Background: Research has shown that the circumstances surrounding birth may influence the timing of death. In the northern hemisphere, children born in spring and summer have a shorter lifespan than those born in fall and winter. Objective: We describe the effect of month of birth on adult lifespan (50+) in the United States in three ways. First, we estimate it between and within groups of siblings

Background: Across the globe, employment for pay outside the home plays a key role in the lives of women, and increasing the proportion of women involved in high-quality jobs is a critical component of reaching several sustainable development goals. While existing research from high-income societies demonstrates that women’s employment is not constant over the life course, relatively less is known

Background: Research on older adults’ geographic proximity to their family has focused almost exclusively on intergenerational distances, while factors associated with intragenerational proximity have received little attention. Objective: We explore associations between (1) having at least one sibling nearby and characteristics of older adults (aged 65‒84), and (2) proximity to siblings and characteristics

BACKGROUND Despite remarkable progress in reducing maternal mortality, maternal morbidities remain high, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study estimates the life years that women of reproductive ages spend in poor health due to indirect maternal morbidities and measures how much each morbidity compromises the reproductive-age life expectancy. METHODS Demographic and Health Survey data

Background: Despite remarkable progress in reducing maternal mortality, maternal morbidities remain high, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study estimates the life years that women of reproductive ages spend in poor health due to indirect maternal morbidities and measures how much each morbidity compromises the reproductive-age life expectancy. Methods: Demographic and Health Survey data

BACKGROUND While the use of standard errors and confidence intervals is common in regression-based studies in the population sciences, it is far less common in studies using formal demographic measures and methods, including demographic decompositions. OBJECTIVE This article describes and provides explicit instructions for using four different approaches for computing standard errors for complex demographic

Background: While the use of standard errors and confidence intervals is common in regression-based studies in the population sciences, it is far less common in studies using formal demographic measures and methods, including demographic decompositions. Objective: This article describes and provides explicit instructions for using four different approaches for computing standard errors for complex

BACKGROUND Parents who separate face the challenge of an urgent change in housing needs. Both parents have their individual needs – e.g., proximity to work – as well as the common need to provide stability for their children and to stay involved – e.g., proximity to school and living space for the children. The urgency and specificity of the needs might be particularly problematic for parents with

Background: Parents who separate face the challenge of an urgent change in housing needs. Both parents have their individual needs – e.g., proximity to work – as well as the common need to provide stability for their children and to stay involved – e.g., proximity to school and living space for the children. The urgency and specificity of the needs might be particularly problematic for parents with

BACKGROUND The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) enables investigating family-related events from a life course perspective. After its first round of face-to-face implementation, various factors resulted in the second round being implemented on the web. Despite its advantages, implementing a web-based GGS has its drawbacks ‒ for instance, possible misreporting, and especially underreporting, of life

Background: The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) enables investigating family-related events from a life course perspective. After its first round of face-to-face implementation, various factors resulted in the second round being implemented on the web. Despite its advantages, implementing a web-based GGS has its drawbacks ‒ for instance, possible misreporting, and especially underreporting, of

BACKGROUND The increasing prevalence of frailty in ageing populations represents a major social and public health challenge which warrants a better understanding of the contribution of frailty to the morbid process. OBJECTIVE To examine frailty-related mortality as reported on death certificates in France, Italy, Spain, and the United States in 2017. METHODS We identify frailty at death for the population

Background: The increasing prevalence of frailty in ageing populations represents a major social and public health challenge which warrants a better understanding of the contribution of frailty to the morbid process. Objective: To examine frailty-related mortality as reported on death certificates in France, Italy, Spain, and the United States in 2017. Methods: We identify frailty at death for the

BACKGROUND In the literature, there exists a closed form solution to the remaining life expectancy at age x when mortality is governed by the Gompertz law. This expression contains a special function that allows us to construct high-accuracy approximations, which are also helpful in assessing the elasticity of life expectancy with respect to the model parameters. However, to my knowledge, a similar

Background: In the literature, there exists a closed form solution to the remaining life expectancy at age x when mortality is governed by the Gompertz law. This expression contains a special function that allows us to construct high-accuracy approximations, which are also helpful in assessing the elasticity of life expectancy with respect to the model parameters. However, to my knowledge, a similar

OBJECTIVE To compare fertility in India to both low-to-middle-income and high-income countries (LMICs and HICs) and describe the patterns that have accompanied India’s transition to low fertility. METHODS We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the United Nations (UN), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to observe factors associated with fertility

Objective: To compare fertility in India to both low-to-middle-income and high-income countries (LMICs and HICs) and describe the patterns that have accompanied India’s transition to low fertility. Methods: We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the United Nations (UN), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to observe factors associated with fertility

BACKGROUND Although literacy rates in India have improved for both men and women, less is known about the evolution of gender disparities across different levels of educational attainment. OBJECTIVE The goal is to determine whether gender gaps in schooling outcomes have narrowed, widened, or remained unchanged across birth cohorts. METHODS With a multinomial logit specification, we compare six education

Background: Although literacy rates in India have improved for both men and women, less is known about the evolution of gender disparities across different levels of educational attainment. Objective: The goal is to determine whether gender gaps in schooling outcomes have narrowed, widened, or remained unchanged across birth cohorts. Methods: With a multinomial logit specification, we compare six education

OBJECTIVE This paper investigates ethnic and regional disparities in fatality rates in the Russian military in 2022‒2023 during the war in Ukraine. METHODS The analysis uses a new crowdsourced dataset comprising the names of over 20,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine between February 2022 and April 2023. This dataset was compiled by a team of volunteers who gathered information from social media

Objective: This paper investigates ethnic and regional disparities in fatality rates in the Russian military in 2022‒2023 during the war in Ukraine. Methods: The analysis uses a new crowdsourced dataset comprising the names of over 20,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine between February 2022 and April 2023. This dataset was compiled by a team of volunteers who gathered information from social media

BACKGROUND It has been postulated that the COVID-19 pandemic will contribute to fertility decline, especially in low-fertility contexts. Little is known how the consequences of the pandemic differed at the subnational level. OBJECTIVE We investigated whether fertility declined beyond the first wave in early 2020 at both the national and the subnational levels in South Korea. We also examined marital

BACKGROUND This is the introduction to a special collection of articles produced within a large-scale collaborative research project, FamiliesAndSocieties, funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme in 2013‒2017. OBJECTIVE The special collection addresses (1) the gendered outcomes of employment for fertility, well-being, and partnership stability, and (2) the new role of men in various

BACKGROUND Age misreporting affects population estimates at older ages. In Brazil, every citizen must be registered and show an identity document to vaccinate against COVID-19. This requirement to present proof of age provides a unique opportunity for measuring the oldest-old population using novel administrative data. OBJECTIVE To offer critically assessed estimates of the Brazilian population aged

BACKGROUND Previous research has derived bounds on the remaining life expectancy function e(x) that connect survivorship and remaining life expectancy at two age values and therefore can be used to, among other things, estimate life expectancy at birth when the population’s full mortality trajectory is not known. RESULTS We show that the aforementioned bounds emerge from using particular two-node closed

BACKGROUND A classic debate concerns whether absolute or relative income is more salient. Absolute values resources as constant across time and place while relative contextualizes one’s hierarchical location in the distribution of a time and place. OBJECTIVE This study investigates specifically whether absolute income or relative income matters more for health and well-being. METHODS We exploit within-person

BACKGROUND Intergenerational social mobility, or the inheritance of status characteristics, is well-studied in Sweden. However, it accounts for just one aspect of the process of intergenerational reproduction of social inequality. The role of socially stratified fertility in this process remains underexplored. OBJECTIVE I address the gap in knowledge by replicating the approach pioneered by Skopek

BACKGROUND The components of urbanisation are important to understand, since urbanisation is closely related to development. Internal migration was key in historical urban transitions, while in contemporary transitions the balance of births and deaths has been the main driver of urbanisation. Reclassification of rural areas and international migration also contribute to urbanisation. OBJECTIVE Unlike

BACKGROUND Several studies show that cohabiting adult children have less frequent contact with their mothers than married adult children. We argue that these findings might be spurious due to confounding. OBJECTIVE Our aim is to replicate earlier research using more robust statistical instruments from the family of multi-level models with fixed effects, which are known to offer better control of omitted-variable

BACKGROUND The assessment of relationship quality is a key construct in family research and relies on several indicators. As answer behavior for sensitive and subjective questions can be biased by the interview situation, the emerging switch from face-to-face mode to web or mixed mode in surveys challenges the comparability of measurements. OBJECTIVE This study investigates the impact of two modes

BACKGROUND The consequences of declining parent–child ties after divorce have primarily been studied for children’s well-being and not for parents’ well-being. Some parents lose contact with their children after divorce, and one would expect that such a decline in contact hampers their emotional well-being, in particular when parents are older and children are adults. OBJECTIVE This study aims to describe

OBJECTIVE A comprehensive and thorough investigation of the key trends in family patterns in Western Germany. METHODS Descriptive analyses of educational differences in marital status, cohabitation, partnerlessness, and children in the household in Western Germany from 1976 to 2019. We analyze unique data from the German Microcensus with information from more than 1.7 million individuals. RESULTS In

BACKGROUND Although women’s empowerment is one of the key concepts in development, it has proven challenging to measure it. Empirical studies have tended to focus on a cause-and-effect analysis of empowerment and using composite measures to compare different national contexts. More recent works suggest new conceptual and methodological approaches to women’s empowerment that better reflect contextual

BACKGROUND Rising median age at marriage and increasing lifestyle differentials across occupations suggest that occupations increasingly offer important signals of the economic and cultural resources of potential spouses. Scant attention has been paid to occupational assortative mating in recent years. Rarer are studies about racial, ethnic, and nationality differences in occupational homogamy rates

BACKGROUND Divorce is associated with a weakened relationship between the child and the nonresident parent, usually the father. This loss of contact is likely to be even further exacerbated if this parent lives at a substantial distance from the child. OBJECTIVE This paper analyzes how the distance between children and nonresident parents, the year after a parental separation, has changed during a

BACKGROUND Many industrialized societies have experienced increases in life expectancy and in the mean age at first birth (MAFB). This has likely impacted the lifetime that parents share with their children; i.e., parenthood expectancy (PEX). OBJECTIVE With increasing life expectancy contributing positively to PEX and increasing MAFB leading to a reduction in the time spent as an ever-parent, our goal

BACKGROUND The rise in the age at first birth has been universal in low-fertility countries in the last decades. Mothers who have their first child later tend to have fewer children, and in the absence of fertility catch-up at older ages, delayed fertility contributes to cohort fertility decline. OBJECTIVE We aim to study how changes in completed cohort fertility (quantum) relate to delayed age at

BACKGROUND The decline in marriage and increases in cohabiting unions during childbearing ages represent a major change in family structures and family dynamics. Yet no comprehensive description has covered period trends in the prevalence of marital and nonmarital unions or partnership entry and exit rates across educational levels. OBJECTIVE We describe period trends in the proportion of individuals

BACKGROUND Population aging is a fundamental element of the demographic transition. In the absence of births, deaths, and migration, the mean age of any population will increase one year per calendar year. The intensity of period birth, death, and migration conditions (i.e., their crude rates and the difference between their mean age and the mean age of the population) either lessen or strengthen this

BACKGROUND The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Hispanic population resulted in the almost complete elimination of the long-standing Hispanic mortality advantage relative to the non-Hispanic White population. However, it is unknown how COVID-19 mortality affected the diverse Hispanic subpopulations. OBJECTIVE We estimate life expectancy at birth in 2019 and 2020 by select Hispanic country/region

BACKGROUND The debate about limits to the human life span is often based on outcomes from mortality at the oldest ages among longevity pioneers. To this day, scholars disagree on the existence of a late-life plateau in human mortality. Amid various statistical analysis frameworks, the parametric proportional hazards model is a simple and valuable approach to test the presence of a plateau by assuming

BACKGROUND Previous work identifies conservative family behaviour amongst Pakistanis in the United Kingdom relative to natives, including earlier marriages, fewer dissolutions, and higher fertility. However, few studies have investigated how fertility and partnership are intertwined and interdependent. OBJECTIVE Our aims are, first, to identify differences between the family trajectories of Pakistanis

BACKGROUND In the last few decades, a substantial number of older adults have migrated to new countries around the retirement age to raise their quality of life, a phenomenon that has been labeled as international retirement migration. The scattered body of research on this type of migration across disciplines has made it difficult to get an overview of why retirement migrants move and how they fare

BACKGROUND The preference for having children of a particular sex may be reflected in fertility behavior. For example, parents who want to have a son may be more likely to have another child if their firstborn child is female or if they have two female children. They may also speed up the conception, resulting in a faster progression to the next child. OBJECTIVE We examine whether there is a sex preference

BACKGROUND The historical demography literature has a longstanding interest in establishing a connection between human body development and the living conditions experienced during infancy and childhood. Empirical research on such matters increasingly relies on survival indicators rather than classical economic measures of living standards, as the former are more directly linked to nutritional quality

BACKGROUND Universities are described as “waiting halls” for union formation. However, little is known about the size of the educational gradient in single living after leaving home. OBJECTIVE This paper examines the educational gradient in single living after leaving home in 30 European countries and the role of gender and the gender climate in each country for this gradient. METHODS I use data from

BACKGROUND Segmented assimilation theory asserts that children born to immigrants experience divergent paths of incorporation. While some exhibit substantial gains in well-being, others may fare worse than US-origin whites or their own parents. It is certainly true that contemporary immigrants find themselves living in a different context than those who arrived in the United States during the early

BACKGROUND The frequency of twin births has increased dramatically since the 1970s in nearly all developed countries. This upsurge poses a public health challenge because multiple pregnancies are associated with higher health risks and other disadvantages for both the children and the parents. A better understanding of the variation and trends in twinning and other multiple rates is therefore urgently

BACKGROUND In recent decades, patterns of transition to adulthood have undergone substantial changes, including an increase in people living solo after leaving the parental home. However, the extent to which solo living after leaving the parental home is a transitory state, quickly followed by union formation, or a relatively long-term state in the pathways to adulthood, and how long-term solo living