Three Essays On Family, Gender, And Educational Change Across Low- And Middle-Income Countries

Over the past half century, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have undergone profound transformations in the realm of the family, accompanied by shifts in gender norms and practices, and dramatic increases in schooling. Rising educational attainment has in turn been a by-product of micro-level behavioral changes on the part of families, alongside macro-level socio-structural factors such as industrialization, urbanization, and targeted educational policies. This dissertation advances the field of social demography by exploring the interrelations between family, gender, and educational dynamics across LMICs. Although the three essays represent self-contained articles, they all trace linkages between these three dimensions with a focus on LMICs, thus contributing new empirical knowledge on policy-relevant population processes in contexts that have to date received less scholarly attention. The first chapter provides a macro-level overview on the changing nature of families across multiple domains with advances in socio-economic development. Its focus is on family change, yet gender features in the type of indicators considered, some of which are computed separately for men and women – showing vastly divergent patterns – while others capture men and women’s bargaining power within the couple. Educational expansion features throughout the discussion as one key driver of family change and one component of the Human Development Index (HDI) proxying for socio-economic development. The second chapter provides an overview on trends, variation, and implications of educational assortative mating for inequality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Mating patterns are vital to understanding the demographic makeup of households, such as family formation, composition, and breakdown. The focus on education and gender is inherent in the type of question raised (educational homogamy/heterogamy) and perspective adopted (couple). The third chapter explores the effect of a cash-transfer intervention given to parents on children’s schooling and unpaid work in rural Morocco. As such, the family focus is tied to a parental investment perspective, while the educational focus comes from the policy considered – a cash transfer promoted by the government – and the outcomes analyzed – school dropout and grade progression. Lastly, gender features throughout the discussion as analyses consider heterogeneity by gender, and unpaid care dynamics show striking gender differences

Does Financial Literacy Increase Students’ Perceived Value of Schooling?

Using data from the 2012 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) for Italy, this paper investigates whether financial literacy skills play a role in shaping the value that high school students place on schooling. We hypothesize that higher financial literacy may foster students’ awareness of the financial and non-financial benefits of gaining additional education, together with the costs associated with poor school outcomes. We complement OLS estimates with an instrumental variable (IV) approach to recover a plausibly causal effect of financial literacy on the school outcomes of interest, namely (a) truancy and time spent on homework outside of school (time commitment to education), and (b) attitudes towards school (attitudes). Results suggest that higher financial literacy increases students’ perceived value of schooling by boosting their time commitment to education. Conversely, there is no evidence that financial literacy shapes students’ attitudes towards school. We see this finding as consist is easier to measure objectively and reliably than attitudes

Increases in child marriage among the poorest in Mali: 'reverse policies' or data quality issues?

Child marriage is associated with adverse outcomes related to women's well-being. Many countries have introduced laws banning this practice, and a number of studies have evaluated their impact. Scant research has focused on instances where countries have lowered the legal minimum age at marriage, even though such 'reverse policies' could result in stalled or uneven progress in eradicating child marriage. Using visualization techniques, regression analyses, and multiple robustness checks, we document changes in the prevalence of child marriage in Mali, where in 2011 the general minimum age at marriage of 18 was lowered to 16. Since 2011, the prevalence of child marriage has progressively increased among women with no education and women living in communities characterized by low local development. We reflect on the role that data collection processes may play in explaining some of these findings and stress how repealing existing provisions aiming to protect girls can have adverse consequences on the most vulnerable social strata

Household Determinants of Teen Marriage and Childbearing: Sister Effects Across Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Using data from the “Young Lives” study of childhood poverty tracking a cohort of children from the ages of 8 to 19, this paper aims to investigate the household determinants of teen marriage and teen pregnancy in four low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), namely Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. Its contribution is twofold. First, we offer a descriptive and comparative overview of the prevalence of teen marriage and childbearing in geographically selected areas across the four countries of interest, together with their socio-demographic determinants. Second, we place a specific focus on the role of gender and sibling sex-composition in shaping the probability of getting married and/or having a child by age 19. We test the hypothesis that in contexts where resources are scarce and customs are rooted, parents tend to arrange their daughters’ marriages in order, hence girls with older sisters face a lower risk of marrying early or giving birth, all else equal. We show that, while in most countries the presence and number of older sisters in the household is associated with a 10-to-30- percent lower likelihood of teen marriage and pregnancy, the evidence weakens – and somewhat reverses in Ethiopia – once a presumably causal effect is estimated. As such, our findings enrich and complement existing evidence on the role of sibling sex-composition on later-life outcomes in LMICs

The Selective Impact of Changes in Age-at-Marriage Laws on Early Marriage: Policy Challenges and Implications for Women’s Higher-Education Attendance

This study explores the extent to which changes in age-at-marriage laws are effective in curbing early marriage and, if so, whether delays in age at marriage brought about by legal changes increase women’s likelihood to participate in higher education. To answer these questions, we combine individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) with longitudinal information on policy changes from the PROSPERED project for six low- and middle-income countries from three broad regions: Benin and Mauritania (Sub-Sharan Africa), Tajikistan and Kazakhstan (Central Asia), and Nepal and Bhutan (South Asia). We adopted regression discontinuity design to obtain estimates of the causal effect of changes in age-at-marriage laws on early marriage and educational outcomes. Our results suggest that these laws work only selectively – specifically, significant reductions in early marriage following the law implementation are observed only in two out of the six countries – yet when they work, their impact on early marriage has important implications for women’s higher-education attendance. In Tajikistan and Nepal, an increase in the legal age at marriage by one or two years, respectively, leads to a 20-60 percentage-point higher likelihood of attending some form of higher education. In light of the significant human capital gains documented in countries where laws proved to have an impact, we conclude by arguing that, in order for changes in laws to be effective, better laws must be accompanied by better enforcement and monitoring to delay marriage and protect the rights of women and girls. Adequate policy implementation and enforcement are necessary preconditions for actual change and should be the subject of greater international attention and investments

A Sequence-Analysis Approach to the Study of the Transition to Adulthood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

This study investigates whether young people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have experienced processes of de-standardization of the life course similar to those observed in high-income societies. We provide two contributions to the relevant literature. First, we use data from 263 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 69 LMICs, offering the richest comparative account of women’s transition to adulthood (TTA) patterns in the developing world existing to date. In so doing, we shift the focus from individual life-course transitions towards a holistic approach that allows us to characterize the life-course complexity by detailed sequences of events, namely first sexual intercourse, first union, and first birth. Second, using a clustering algorithm based on optimal-matching distances of lifecourse sequences, we identify clusters of TTA and explore their changes across cohorts by region and urban/rural location of residence. Results stress the importance of investigating cross-regional differences in partnership and fertility trajectories by looking at the interrelation and complexity of status combinations. Summarizing the ensuing heterogeneity through four clusters, we document significant differences by macro-regions yet relative stability across cohorts. We interpret the latter as suggestive of cultural specificities that make the TTA resistant to change and slow to converge across regions, if converging at all

Harnessing the Potential of Google Searches for Understanding Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence Before and After COVID-19 Outbreak

Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external circumstances. This is for instance the case of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), a highly-prevalent social phenomenon which has drastically risen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores whether big data — an increasingly common tool to track, nowcast, and forecast social phenomena in close-to-real time — might help track and understand IPV dynamics. We leverage online data from Google Trends to explore whether online searches might help reach “hard-to-reach” populations such as victims of IPV using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV — both potential threat and actual violent cases — in Italy? Is their predictive power weaker or stronger in the aftermath of crises such as COVID-19? Our results suggest that online searches using selected keywords measuring different facets of IPV are a powerful tool to track potential threats of IPV before and during global-level crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, with stronger predictive power post outbreaks. Conversely, online searches help predict actual violence only in post-outbreak scenarios. Our findings, validated by a Facebook survey, also highlight the important role that socioeconomic status (SES) plays in shaping online search behavior, thus shedding new light on the role played by third-level digital divides in determining the forecasting power of digital traces. More specifically, they suggest that forecasting might be more reliable among high-SES population strata

Up, Down and Reciprocal: The Dynamics of Intergenerational Transfers, Family Structure and Health in a Low-Income Context

In the absence of well-functioning public transfer systems and safety nets, the family acts as the key provider of income and support through the intergenerational redistribution of resources. In this paper we use micro-level longitudinal data and a mix of methodologies to document the lifecycle patterns of financial transfers in a rural, sub-Saharan African population. Underneath a well-established age-pattern of intergenerational transfers in which transfer patterns change according to broad stages of the economic life cycle, our analyses document significant heterogeneity and fluidity: Intergenerational transfers are variable and reverse their direction, with individuals moving between the provider and recipient states repeatedly across their life course and within each major stage of the life-cycle. Contrary to common perceptions about family transfers ameliorating short-term shocks, transfers in our analyses are driven primarily by demographic factors such as changes in health, household size, and household composition, rather than short-term events. Overall our analyses suggest that the role of transfers in this rural sub-Saharan context is significantly more complex than suggested by theories and evidence on aggregate transfer patterns, and at the micro-level, intergenerational transfers encapsulate multiple functions ranging from direct exchange to old-age support in the absence of a public pension system

Harnessing the Potential of Online Searches for Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Intimate Partner Violence in Italy

Despite the volume of studies leveraging big data to explore socio-demographic phenomena, we still know little about the intersection of digital information and the social problem of intimate partner violence (IPV). This is an important knowledge gap, as IPV remains a pressing public-health concern worldwide, with 35% of women having experienced it over their lifetime and cases rising dramatically in the wake of global crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. This study addresses the question of whether online data from Google Trends might help to reach “hard-to-reach” populations such as victims of IPV using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV — both potential threat and actual violent cases — in Italy? Is their predictive power weaker or stronger in the aftermath of crises such as COVID-19? Our results combined suggest that online Google searches using selected keywords measuring different aspects of IPV are a powerful tool to track potential threats of IPV before and after global-level crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic — with stronger predictive power post-crisis — while online searches help to predict actual violence only in post-crises scenarios

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