The neglected role of domestic migration on family patterns in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1950-2000

Urbanization has played a key role in shaping twentieth-century demographic changes in Latin America and the Caribbean (LACar). As a result, scholarly research on domestic migration and the family has primarily focused on fertility differentials by migration status in urban areas, finding a robust negative correlation between internal migration and fertility. This research has overlooked how this relationship varies across types of migration flows other than rural-to-urban migration and by women's age at migration and social class. Additionally, not enough attention has been paid to the family formation and dissolution trajectories underlying the lower fertility of rural migrants. I use a life-course inductive approach to examine these overlooked aspects among women from 10 LACar countries, including the three largest countries by population. Using retrospective information on women's childbearing and marital histories from the Demographic and Health Surveys, I build an eight-category typology of family paths and study the conditional distribution of this typology by women's age at migration, educational attainment, and origin/destination area. This examination demonstrates that social class is the primary source of differentiation across family formation and dissolution trajectories and that low-class young rural migrants played a crucial role in the demographic transformations that occurred in the region

Family change in Latin America : schooling and labor market implications for children and women

This chapter provides an account of the major family transformations that occurred in recent decades across Latin American and Caribbean countries and examines the implications of such transformations for children's school attendance and progress and women's labor force participation. Latin American and Caribbean families and households have undergone substantial changes in recent years while keeping some of their distinctive features unchanged (Esteve et al.,2022; Esteve & Florez-Paredes, 2018a; Juárez & Gayet, 2014). This combination of stability and change has had profound transformations in the family status in which women raise their children and the family context in which children are raised. We refer to family context as the combination of women's marital status and the type of households in which children reside. We combine references to the literature and own calculations based on Latin American and Caribbean population census samples, available at the Integrated Public-use Microdata Series International (IPUMS) (Minnesota Population Center, 2020). We use data from 25 countries based on the most recent census microdata and, in some instances, historical samples starting in the late 1950s (see Appendix 1). The chapter is organized as follows. First, we document trends in family change and children's status. To illustrate family change empirically, we focus on women aged 25 to 29 and children aged 7 to 16. For reasons that will be displayed during the paper, these groups offer a reliable overview of major transformations with the advantage of avoiding overlapping cohorts when data are analyzed over time. Variations by educational attainment are also examined to illustrate the role of inequality of opportunities in family change. Second, we focus on the implications of family forms on children's school attendance and progress and women's participation in the labor market. In the absence of tailored indicators about progress in cognitive and non-cognitive skills, school attendance and progress are standard indicators of early human capital accumulation (UNESCO, 2022). We examine these two outcomes among more than 15 million children included in the IPUMS-I census samples. For women, we examine the degree of participation in the labor market (n = 16 million). We consider the implications of family contexts on children's outcomes and women's labor force participation as mere associations within variables as we cannot investigate the mechanisms and causal relationships that produce such outcomes. To strengthen our interpretation, we rely on existing studies with causality-oriented designs and discuss the potential linkages among family structures, women's labor force participation, and children's well'-being (Amador & Bernal Rose et al., 2017; S. Reynolds et al., 2018). The chapter ends with a discussion of the main results, including their relation with other chapters and existing studies, and suggestions for future research

Nativity differentials in first births in the United States: Patterns by race and ethnicity

Background: While recent decades have seen gradual convergence in ethno-racial disparities in completed fertility in the United States, differences in the age pattern of first births remain. The role of nativity has not been fully understood. Objective: This paper examines how first births vary by nativity, and how this variation contributes to more significant racial and ethnic differentials. Methods: Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth (1997-2017), we jointly estimate the correlates of the timing of first births and childlessness. We assess differences between immigrants and US-born and child-migrant women across ethno-racial groups. Results: The unique first-birth patterns among foreign-born women have a notable impact on Hispanics, reducing differences from Whites in the average age at first birth and contributing to more significant differentials in childlessness. The impact of immigrant women on White and Black first births is more modest in scope. Contribution: Our work shows the importance of nativity for ethnic/racial disparities in the timing and quantum of fertility in the United States. We demonstrate how the migrant population is more determinant for Hispanic fertility patterns than for Black or White. We conclude by elaborating on the implications of these results for future research as the immigrant population in the United States becomes ethnically and racially more diverse

Human fertility after a disaster : a systematic literature review

Fertility is a key demographic parameter influenced by disaster. With the growing risk of disasters, interest in the fertility response to a disaster is increasing among the public, policy makers and researchers alike. As yet, a synthesis of the current evidence on how fertility changes after disaster does not exist. We reviewed 50 studies retrieved from a systematic search based on a pre-registered protocol. We found an overall negative impact of disasters on fertility. If any, increases in fertility were mostly linked with weather-related physical disasters. We also identified 13 distinct mechanisms which researchers have considered as underlying the fertility effects of disaster. By contrast to the common belief that disasters are more likely to increase fertility in contexts with already high fertility, we found little evidence to suggest that the total fertility rate of the studied populations was an important predictor of the direction, timing or size of fertility impacts. While this may be because no relationship exists, it may also be due to biases we observed in the literature towards studying high-income countries or high-cost disasters. We summarize the methodological limitations identified from the reviewed studies into six practical recommendations for future research. Our findings inform both the theories behind the fertility effects of disasters and the methods for studying them

Union formation, within-couple dynamics, and child well-being: a global macrolevel perspective

Studies on global changes in families have greatly increased over the past decade, adopting both a country-specific and, more recently, a cross-national comparative perspective. While most studies are focused on the drivers of global changes in families, little comparative research has explored the implications of family processes for the health and well-being of children. This study aims to fill this gap and launch a new research agenda exploring the intergenerational implications of union-formation and within-couple dynamics for children's health and well-being across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), both globally, regionally, and by the stage of fertility transition. We do so by adopting a macrolevel perspective and a multi-axis conceptualization of children's outcomes-health at birth, health in later life, and schooling-and leveraging Demographic and Health Survey and World Bank data across 75 LMICs. Our results show that in societies where partnerships are characterized by more equal status between spouses-that is, where the age range between spouses and differences in years of schooling between partners are narrower-children fare better on several outcomes. These associations are particularly strong in mid- and high-fertility settings. Despite a series of regularities, our results also highlight a set of findings whereby, at a macrolevel, the prevalence of marriage and divorce/separation are not invariably associated with children's outcomes, especially in LMICs where fertility is comparatively lower. We document little cross-regional heterogeneity, primarily highlighting the centrality of demographic factors such as age vis-à-vis, for instance, region-specific characteristics that are more tied to the social fabric of specific societies

Family Change and Variation Through the Lens of Family Configurations in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Using 254 Demographic and Health Surveys from 75 low- and middle-income countries, this study shows how the joint examination of family characteristics across rural and urban areas provides new insights for understanding global family change. We operationalize this approach by building family configurations: a set of interrelated features that describe different patterns of family formation and structure. These features include partnership (marriage/unions) regimes and their stability, gender relations, household composition, and reproduction. Factorial and clustering techniques allow us to summarize these family features into three factorial axes and six discrete family configurations. We provide an in-depth description of these configurations, their spatial distribution, and their changes over time. Global family change is uneven because it emerges from complex interplays between the relative steadiness of longstanding arrangements for forming families and organizing gender relations, and the rapidly changing dynamics observed in the realms of fertility, contraception, and timing of family formation

Los 15 años de la Revista Latinoamericana de Población desde una perspectiva bibliométrica

Con motivo de los 15 años de la Revista Latinoamericana de Población (RELAP), en este estudio analizamos información básica sobre sus artículos y autores/as para evidenciar la evolución de la agenda de investigación demográfica latinoamericana a partir de la producción científica publicada en una de las revistas más importantes de la región. Encontramos que, en los primeros años de la revista, hubo un énfasis en la producción sobre familias y migración, mientras que, en los últimos años, la investigación sobre mortalidad y salud incrementó su importancia relativa. En general, se observa una diversidad temática; sin embargo, existen brechas significativas en la distribución de artículos según el país del primer autor/a y el país de estudio. Se evidencia la paridad según el sexo del primer autor/a, así como el carácter colectivo de las publicaciones de RELAP por una alta incidencia de textos con varios autores

A gender story of social disengagement of young adults in Latin America

In the recent years, Latin America has seen a large number of young adults who are neither engaged in formal education nor work, commonly dubbed as "nini" ("ni" trabajan "ni" estudian). This study tests the role household structure plays on becoming a nini in 12 Latin American countries. We explore the gender dynamic of human capital stagnation and intergenerational mobility by focusing on early family formation for women and men aged 20-25 using censuses from the Integrated Public-Use Microdata Series (IPUMS-I). Countryspecific linear regression models reveal that the intersection of class and gender is a major determinant of labor force and educational disengagement in the region. Women from lower social origin who leave parental home to enter union and parenthood at younger ages are particularly disadvantaged. Moreover, among those who are active in the labor market, young mothers are less likely to experience upward intergenerational mobility in occupation compared to those who delay childbearing. This work highlights the importance of addressing economic and educational disengagement of early adulthood to foster economic growth and development in the region

Diverging reproductive outcomes by maternal education during the Covid-19 pandemic across Brazilian and Colombian regions

Altres ajuts: Generalitat de Catalunya (2021 BP 00027)This work contributes to the current understanding of the heterogeneous impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on fertility. Using more than 36.4 million birth and death records for Brazil and Colombia (2015-2021), we document state-level correlations between the intensity of the pandemic, measured by the current and 9-month lagged excess mortality, and the observed number of births relative to a Covid-19-free hypothetical scenario. We disaggregate these correlations according to maternal age and years of schooling to test the hypothesis that the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on births interacted with pre-existing forms of social inequality. Results from multivariate linear models suggest that the association between the intensity of the pandemic and the relative number of births was negative for women with at least 8 years of schooling, while it was positive or null for women with fewer years of education. This result means that in subnational areas severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, women with few years of schooling did not delay fertility as most women potentially did. These results suggest that disadvantaged groups in Latin America and potentially in other contexts may suffer more acutely the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been largely neglected by studies that assume homogeneous impacts of Covid-19 on population dynamics

Factors associated with adolescent pregnancy in Maharashtra, India: a mixed-methods study

Reducing the adolescent birth rate is paramount in achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals, given that pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of mortality among young women aged 15-19. This study aimed to explore predictors of adolescent pregnancy among girls aged 13-18 years in Maharashtra, India, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a mixed-methods approach, primary data were gathered from two regions in Maharashtra between February and April 2022. Quantitative data from face-to-face interviews with 3049 adolescent girls assessed various household, social, and behavioural factors, as well as the socioeconomic and health impacts of COVID-19. Qualitative data from seven in-depth interviews were analysed thematically. The findings reveal that girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds face a higher likelihood of adolescent pregnancy. Multivariable analysis identified several factors associated with increased risk, including older age, being married, having more sexual partners, and experiencing COVID-19-related economic vulnerability. On the other hand, rural residence, secondary and higher secondary education of the participants, and higher maternal education were associated with a decreased likelihood of adolescent pregnancy. In the sub-sample of 565 partnered girls, partner's emotional abuse also correlated with higher rates of adolescent pregnancy. Thematic analysis of qualitative data identified four potential pathways leading to adolescent pregnancy: economic hardships and early marriage; personal safety, social norms, and early marriage; social expectations; and lack of knowledge on contraceptives. The findings underscore the significance of social position and behavioural factors and the impact of external shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic in predicting adolescent pregnancy in Maharashtra, India