Global Family Change: Persistent Diversity with Development

This paper provides a broad empirical overview of the relationship between family change and socio-economic development drawing on 30+ years of Demographic and Health Survey data from 3.5 million respondents across 84 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We conduct two sets of analyses. First, we document global and regional-level associations between the Human Development Index (HDI) and novel indicators reflecting multidimensional family change. Second, we use methods from the growth convergence literature to examine whether – and in which domains – there is evidence of cross-country convergence in family indicators over levels of development. We show that families in LMICs have transformed in multiple ways, changing differently across domains, world regions, and genders. Fertility, intra-couple decision-making, and women’s life-course timing indicators are strongly associated with HDI, yet cross-country convergence is limited to the latter domain. Marriage, cohabitation, household structure, and men’s life-course timing indicators are more weakly associated with HDI, and span a broad spectrum of convergence dynamics ranging from divergence to modest convergence. We describe this scenario as “persistent diversity with development,” and shed light on the underlying regional heterogeneity – driven primarily by sub-Saharan Africa

Little-Italy: an Agent-Based Approach to the Estimation of Contact Patterns. Fitting Predicted Matrices to Serological Data.

Knowledge of social contact patterns still represents the most critical step for understanding the spread of directly transmitted infections. Data on social contact patterns are, however, expensive to obtain. A major issue is then whether the simulation of synthetic societies might be helpful to reliably reconstruct such data. In this paper, we compute a variety of synthetic age-specific contact matrices through simulation of a simple individual-based model (IBM). The model is informed by Italian Time Use data and routine socio-demographic data (e.g., school and workplace attendance, household structure, etc.). The model is named “Little Italy” because each artificial agent is a clone of a real person. In other words, each agent's daily diary is the one observed in a corresponding real individual sampled in the Italian Time Use Survey. We also generated contact matrices from the socio-demographic model underlying the Italian IBM for pandemic prediction. These synthetic matrices are then validated against recently collected Italian serological data for Varicella (VZV) and ParvoVirus (B19). Their performance in fitting sero-profiles are compared with other matrices available for Italy, such as the Polymod matrix. Synthetic matrices show the same qualitative features of the ones estimated from sample surveys: for example, strong assortativeness and the presence of super- and sub-diagonal stripes related to contacts between parents and children. Once validated against serological data, Little Italy matrices fit worse than the Polymod one for VZV, but better than concurrent matrices for B19. This is the first occasion where synthetic contact matrices are systematically compared with real ones, and validated against epidemiological data. The results suggest that simple, carefully designed, synthetic matrices can provide a fruitful complementary approach to questionnaire-based matrices. The paper also supports the idea that, depending on the transmissibility level of the infection, either the number of different contacts, or repeated exposure, may be the key factor for transmission

Causal Effects of the Timing of Life-course Events Age at Retirement and Subsequent Health

In this article, we combine the extensive literature on the analysis of life-course trajectories as sequences with the literature on causal inference and propose a new matching approach to investigate the causal effect of the timing of life-course events on subsequent outcomes. Our matching approach takes into account pre-event confounders that are both time-independent and time-dependent as well as life-course trajectories. After matching, treated and control individuals can be compared using standard statistical tests or regression models. We apply our approach to the study of the consequences of the age at retirement on subsequent health outcomes, using a unique data set from Swedish administrative registers. Once selectivity in the timing of retirement is taken into account, effects on hospitalization are small, while early retirement has negative effects on survival. Our approach also allows for heterogeneous treatment effects. We show that the effects of early retirement differ according to preretirement income, with higher income individuals tending to benefit from early retirement, while the opposite is true for individuals with lower income

Childbearing intentions in a low fertility context: the case of Romania

This paper applies the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to find out the predictors of fertility intentions in Romania, a low-fertility country. We analyse how attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control relate to the intention to have a child among childless individuals and one-child parents. Principal axis factor analysis confirms which items proposed by the Generation and Gender Survey (GGS 2005) act as valid and reliable measures of the suggested theoretical socio-psychological factors. Four parity-specific logistic regression models are applied to evaluate the relationship between the socio-psychological factors and childbearing intentions. Social pressure emerges as the most important aspect in fertility decision-making among childless individuals and one-child parents, and positive attitudes towards childbearing are a strong component in planning for a child. This paper also underlines the importance of the region-specific factors when studying childbearing intentions: planning for the second child significantly differs among the development regions, representing the cultural and socio-economic divisions of the Romanian territory

A Biased Review of Sociophysics

Various aspects of recent sociophysics research are shortly reviewed: Schelling model as an example for lack of interdisciplinary cooperation, opinion dynamics, combat, and citation statistics as an example for strong interdisciplinarity.Comment: 16 pages for J. Stat. Phys. including 2 figures and numerous reference

The science of choice: an introduction

Introduction In October 2015, around 30 scholars convened at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock to discuss: (a) how individuals and families make decisions about marriage, child-birth, migration, retirement, and other transitions in the life course; and (b) how these decision processes can be operationalized in demographic models. The workshop was organized by the Scientific Panel on Microsimulation and Agent-Based Modelling con- vened by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and by MPIDR. The report of this ‘Science of choice’ workshop and the papers presented are available from the workshop’s website (see IUSSP 2015). The five papers included in this Supplement are revised versions of papers presented at the workshop in Rostock

Gender differences in the impact of family background on leaving the parental home

We address the question to what extent characteristics of the family of origin influence the timing of leaving the parental home and to what extent these effects differ between men and women. We use data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study to examine the effects of parental resources, atmosphere in the family of origin and family structure on leaving home to live without a partner and leaving home to live with a partner. The results indicate that a pleasant atmosphere in the parental home decreases the risk of leaving home and living in stepfamilies or single-parent families increases this risk. The availability of parental resources leads to a decreased risk of leaving home at young ages, but an increased risk at later ages. Many of these effects are found for both men and women and for both pathways out of the home. Furthermore, we find evidence that women are affected more strongly by family background characteristics than men are

Ethnic Differences in Leaving Home: Timing and Pathways

The dynamics of leaving home for youth from migrant families in the Netherlands are examined using individual administrative data on the 1977 and 1983 birth cohorts for the period 1999–2004. A competing-risks approach is applied to distinguish leaving home for union formation, to live independently, and to share with others. Migrant youth, and particularly Turkish and Moroccan youth, leave home at a significantly younger age than Dutch youth, given the relevant background variables. This is remarkable, given the older ages at which young people in the origin countries leave the parental home. The result may be seen as evidence of how the potential effects of cultural norms are counter-affected by other factors, such as the facilities of the welfare state and the awkward position of migrant youth between two cultures. Considering the pathways out of home, the analysis largely confirms the expected pattern: Turkish and Moroccan youth leave home more often for union formation and particularly marriage, while this pathway is of minor importance for Dutch youth at early ages

Home-leaving decisions of daughters and sons

In spite of relevant differences between countries, a common international pattern emerges: daughters leave parental homes earlier than sons. Drawing upon the European Community Household Panel, we explore the impacts of various factors that affect daughters' and sons' home-leaving decisions. Our results show important differences across genders as well as across countries. The decisions of daughters appear to be more responsive than sons' to family structure as well as to institutional factors such as the labor and the mortgage market

A Reflection on Economic Uncertainty and Fertility in Europe: The Narrative Framework

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