Abstract: BACKGROUND Advancing efforts to unpack the complex relationship between marital dissolutions and health outcomes increasingly requires assessing the marital histories and health of individuals who have lived long enough to experience divorce or widowhood ‒ or even multiples of each ‒ and measurable changes in health. OBJECTIVE To explore this line of inquiry, we chose a sample from rural Malawi where a high prevalence of marital dissolutions and remarrying exists, as an ideal theoretical foil to the predominant literature found in high-income countries (HICs). We examine if changes in having experienced a marital dissolution, one’s total number of dissolutions, and the percentage of one’s life spent outside of marriage since first becoming married are associated with changes in mental health. METHODS Our analyses focus on 1,266 respondents aged 45 years and older who participated in the 2012 Mature Adults Cohort of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH-MAC), linked back to cohort information from 2008 and 2010 available through the MLSFH. Fixed-effects regressions guide our inferences over the 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of data. RESULTS For men, spending more life outside of marriage is associated with worse mental health, while more marital dissolutions are surprisingly associated with better mental health for women. CONCLUSIONS These results could suggest that larger portions of one’s life spent unmarried are associated with a type of role strain for men or simply that men are burdened with taking up tasks that their spouses had previously done in order to survive. For women, many may have gotten out of ‘bad’ marriages that otherwise would have been detrimental to their mental health and/or those in good mental health are the ones able to remarry.
Abstract: BACKGROUND East Asian societies have experienced rapid social changes, among which the extraordinary expansion of higher education for both women and men, rising economic inequality, and increasing labor market uncertainty should be particularly relevant to family changes. At the same time, gender inequality and traditional gender norms still prevail and shape family life in the region. The eight articles in this special collection share the common interest of how families in East Asia have evolved against a backdrop of growing economic inequality and persistent gender inequality – among other key forces affecting family life – across a variety of family-related outcomes: from singlehood, marriage intentions, and dating, through fertility, the time use of adolescents and parents with young children, and women’s careers, to intergenerational coresidence and the life satisfaction of older parents. RESULTS Our eight studies look at connected but distinctive outcomes related to family life, and collectively demonstrate the relevance of increased labor market uncertainty and the continuing male breadwinner norm to emerging patterns of family behavior in East Asia. They illustrate specific ways in which East Asian families are shaped by the joint forces of economic inequality and gender inequality.
Abstract: BACKGROUND South Korea has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, reaching a record low of 0.98 in 2018. Understanding socioeconomic differentials in fertility in South Korea has become an important social and policy issue. OBJECTIVE This study examines socioeconomic differentials in first and second childbirths among married women using various indicators of socioeconomic status at the individual and household level. METHODS Using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (1998–2017), discrete-time hazard models are used to evaluate the relationships between multiple indicators of socioeconomic status and the transition to first and second births. RESULTS Higher socioeconomic status (e.g., husband’s college education and standard employment, homeownership) is conducive to a transition to parenthood and second births. However, the wife’s employment ‒ standard employment in particular ‒ is negatively associated with both first and second childbirth. Among the indicators of socioeconomic resources, stable housing arrangements and the husband’s employment security appear to be the most important factors for a married couple’s fertility decisions. CONCLUSIONS Socioeconomically disadvantaged married couples tend to delay their transition to parenthood. In addition, those with high SES are more likely than their counterparts with low SES to have second births. If these patterns persist, they have important implications for the demographic process and social stratification.
Abstract: BACKGROUND Contraceptive failure increases the chances of pregnancy termination, including both induced abortions and spontaneous terminations. Proper separation requires accounting for competing risks of pregnancy outcomes. OBJECTIVE To measure the differential risk of spontaneous termination and induced abortion according to contraceptive use prior to pregnancy based on pooled Demographic and Health Survey calendar data. METHODS We use multinomial logistic models controlling for demographic and socioeconomic variables to estimate the differential risk of spontaneous termination and induced abortion according to contraceptive use at the time of pregnancy. We address data limitations including recall error, omission error, and possible misclassification of outcomes. RESULTS We find higher risk of induced abortion (RRR = 7.18, CI = 6.38–8.09) and spontaneous termination (RRR = 1.38, CI = 1.13–1.69) after contraceptive failure, with stronger effect for women under 30. Parity, union status, education, and wealth have a strong effect on induced abortion. Regarding spontaneous termination, age mainly explains the increased risk. CONCLUSIONS Since pregnancies following contraceptive failure are less likely to end in a live birth, aggregate models of the impact of family planning should reflect that contraceptive use and induced abortion conform interdependent strategies and that spontaneous termination is a competing risk of induced abortion.
Abstract: BACKGROUND Demography is full of data visualization challenges, such as age-period-cohort effects or life course trajectories. Innovative approaches to visualizing such complex data structures have been proposed from within and outside the discipline. However, demographic data visualizations presented in the scientific literature often fall short of the state-of-the-art. OBJECTIVE We discuss what makes a good data visualization and why it is worthwhile to strive for state-of-the-art visualization. We highlight the distinction between exploratory and explanatory graphics, and relate the seven papers that comprise the Demographic Research special collection on data visualization to the broader endeavor of data visualization in demography.
Abstract: BACKGROUND Inequality in lifespans between two populations, e.g., males and females or people with low and high socioeconomic status, is a focus of demographic, economic, and sociological research and of public policy analysis. Such inequality is usually measured by differences in life expectancy. OBJECTIVE We aim to devise a cogent measure of how much distributions of lifespans differ between two populations. RESULTS We propose an outsurvival statistic, φ (phi), that measures the probability that an individual from a population with low life expectancy will live longer than an individual from a population with high life expectancy. This statistic can also be interpreted as an underdog probability – the chance that a random value from a distribution with a low mean will exceed a random value from a distribution with a higher mean.
Abstract: BACKGROUND Extant research on intergenerational domestic time transfers rarely includes Estonia. This, combined with distinct socio-structural features relevant to such transfers – a post-communist welfare regime, high female labor force participation, and high levels of gender inequality in domestic and care work – makes Estonia a very interesting study setting. OBJECTIVE I examine gendered intergenerational time transfers in Estonia and their (dis)similarity to patterns found in France and Italy. METHODS I draw on Estonian Time Use Survey (ETUS) data from the most recent edition (2009–2010) and estimate OLS regression models with clustered standard errors separately for men and women. (NS1 = 772 person days; NS2 = 1,348 person days; NS3 = 2,481 person days). RESULTS Intergenerational time transfers follow a downward pattern, from parents to adult children, and are mostly maintained through mothers’ high absolute and relative contribution to housework. The participation in domestic tasks of young adults coresiding with parents is also strongly gendered and is mainly related to time availability. Young men and women outside the parental home generally incur time costs, except for single young women, but gender inequality persists across life-course stages. CONCLUSIONS Intergenerational time transfers in Estonia resemble those in Italy more than those in France: there is a marked gender asymmetry, yet not of the same magnitude and with a unique life-course dynamic. Consistent with multi-dimensional gender differentiation, most family arrangements are time-intensive for women.
Abstract: BACKGROUND Studies investigating the correspondence of birth intentions and birth outcomes focus mainly on women’s and men’s intentions separately and disregard the fact that reproductive decision-making is dyadic. OBJECTIVE We examine the intention–outcome link for fertility taking a genuine couple-level approach. We aim to understand whether a heterosexual couple’s conflict is solved in favour or against childbirth and whether the male or the female partner prevails in the decision-making. METHODS Drawing on data from the survey Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA), we perform logistic regressions in which couples are the unit of analysis and the variables are computed by combining both partners’ characteristics. RESULTS Results show that disagreement about having a first child is located between ‘agreement on yes’ and ‘agreement on not,’ with half of disagreeing couples having a child. By contrast, disagreement about having another child is shifted more towards ‘agreement on not’ and most often prevents the birth of a child. Women prevail in the decision of having a first child, irrespective of gender equity within the couple, while a symmetric double-veto model is at work if the decision concerns a second or additional child. CONCLUSIONS Couple disagreement is not always sufficient to prevent the birth of a child in a low fertility country such as Australia, and the increasing level of gender equity within the couple does not necessarily imply increasing female decision-making power on childbearing issues.
Abstract: BACKGROUND There has been much debate whether work and family lives became more complex in past decades, that is, exhibiting more frequent transitions and more uncertainty. Van Winkle and Fasang (2017) and Van Winkle (2018) first benchmarked change in employment and family complexity over time against cross-national differences in 14 European countries. Compared to sizeable and stable cross-national differences, the increase in employment and family complexity was small across cohorts. However, these studies could not include cohorts born past the late 1950s assumed to be most affected by the structural changes driving life course complexity and were limited to a relatively small set of West European countries. OBJECTIVE We replicate and extend these studies by adding over 15 additional countries in Eastern Europe and a decade of younger birth cohorts. METHODS The 3rd and 7th waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, sequence complexity metrics, and cross-classified modelling are used to simultaneously quantify the proportions of variance attributable to cohort and country differences in work and family lives between ages 18 to 50. RESULTS The updated findings still support a negligible increase in family complexity and a moderate increase in employment complexity that pale in comparison to large and stable cross-national differences for individuals born between 1916 and 1966 for work and family lives experienced from 1934 to 2016 in 30 European countries. Specifically, 15 and 10% of employment and family complexity is nested across countries, compared to 5.5 and 2% across birth cohorts. However, the analyses also indicate a polarization in Europe between most Eastern and Southern European countries with stable and low family complexity compared to Nordic and some Western European countries with high and increasing family complexity. In contrast, moderately increasing employment complexity is a Europe-wide trend. CONCLUSIONS This study both replicates the original studies’ findings that cross-cohort change is minor compared to large cross-national differences, and is a substantive extension by addressing a large deficit of description on family and employment life course change in the Balkan and Baltic regions.
Abstract: BACKGROUND While low perceived susceptibility (PS) to pregnancy is a common risk factor for having sex without contraception among women susceptible to unintended pregnancy, little research has examined the correlates of low PS, and none have investigated whether low PS predisposes women to later pregnancy discovery and prenatal care initiation among women with unintended births. METHODS We use data from the 2004‒2011 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System and limit our sample to women in the United States with unintended births who were not using contraception at the time of the index pregnancy (n = 55,940). Women were classified as having low PS if they indicated they could not get pregnant at the time the index pregnancy occurred or they or their partner were sterile. We use logistic regression to identify correlates of low PS and determine whether low PS is associated with timing of pregnancy recognition and prenatal care initiation. RESULTS Over one-third of women with unintended births cited low PS as a reason for contraceptive nonuse. Maternal age and disadvantage are correlated with low PS. Among women with unintended births, those with low PS had lower odds of early pregnancy recognition (adjOR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.82, 0.94) and prenatal care initiation (adjOR = 0.86; 95% CI: 0.79, 0.94) compared to those who did not hold these beliefs.
Abstract: BACKGROUND Researchers have questioned the accuracy of retrospective measures of unintended pregnancy, which ask women whether they wanted a pregnancy before it was conceived. OBJECTIVE We investigated whether pregnant women's retrospective recollections of their pre-conception desires for pregnancy were shaped by intimate relationships, their own reactions, and their perceptions of their partners' reactions to their pregnancies. METHODS We used the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study, which included weekly survey interviews with 971 young women, of whom 175 experienced 203 pregnancies during the 2.5-year study period. We estimated logistic regression models of whether women’s retrospective recollections of their pre-conception desires were stable, shifted positive, or shifted negative compared to their prospectively reported desires, along with formal mediation tests of potential mechanisms. RESULTS Women were more likely to remember their undesired pregnancies as desired before conception if they themselves reacted happily to the pregnancy, they were married or engaged, or they perceived their partner as reacting positively. The association with perceiving her partner as positive was mediated by her own happiness about the pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS Retrospective recollections of pre-conception desire at least partially represent women's current feelings about a pregnancy. Post-conception happiness about a pregnancy may identify mothers and children whose health and well-being are at risk, but prospective measures are necessary to evaluate whether women got what they wanted.
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