Intergenerational support during the rise of mobile telecommunication in Indonesia

Background: In many Southeast Asian populations, urbanization and migration have increased the share of older adults supported by nonresident children. The expansion of mobile telephone infrastructure has emerged as a mechanism to bridge the spatial dispersion of families and to facilitate support for aging adults. Objective: We document two decades of change in the proximity of adult children of older people in Indonesia. We then ask how the arrival and expansion of mobile communication infrastructure changed key dimensions of intergenerational support: frequency of contact and material transfers. Methods: We combine data from a longitudinal, population-representative household survey with area-level information on mobile signal strength in Indonesia spanning the development of mobile telecommunication. We describe shifts in the family network available to older adults as well as changes in support between 1997 and 2014. We use fixed effect specifications to estimate the impact of the arrival of mobile telecommunication on intergenerational support. Results: For Indonesian older adults, the geographic dispersal of adult children increased over the two-decade period, but the proximate residence of at least one child remained stable. Weekly contact and the monetary value of material transfers to older people doubled. The arrival of mobile technology increased contact between aging parents and their adult children but had little impact on material transfers. Contribution: Despite the spatial dispersion of adult children, familial support for the Indonesian older-age population has increased substantially over the past two decades. Telecommunication has supported ongoing intrafamilial exchange, but the effects differ across dimensions of support

Migration and Father Absence: Shifting Family Structure in Mexico

This study uses multistate life tables with data from the Mexican Family Life Survey to examine the contribution of migration to children’s time apart from their fathers. Other common sources of parental household absence, such as divorce, non-union fertility, and death are considered as well. Results suggest that more than a third of Mexican children experience some type of household disruption during childhood. As a population, Mexican children spend nearly equal amounts of time living with a single mother following a father’s migration as they do living with a single mother following union dissolution. Additionally, 7 percent of Mexican children in 2002 have migrating fathers, yet multistate estimates suggest that 17 percent of children born into two-parent homes are expected to experience a migrating father at least once during childhood. Other results highlight key differences in children’s experiences by urban status at birth and by the education level of their mothers

Mothers' Community Participation and Child Health

We use rich data to assess the relationship between mothers’ access to social capital via participation in community activities and their children’s health in Indonesia. We exploit the advantages of longitudinal data and community fixed effects to mitigate some of the concerns about spuriousness and reverse causality that predominate in this literature. We find that children from families with relatively low levels of human and financial capital fare better with respect to health status when their mothers are more active participants in community organizations. In fact, the association between maternal participation and child health is strong, positive, and statistically significant only for children from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds, as measured by their mother’s educational level and economic resources within the household. The results suggest that in resource-constrained settings, community involvement may benefit disadvantaged families, possibly by providing resources and information that would otherwise be inaccessible

Mothers' Community Participation and Child Health

We use rich data to assess the relationship between mothers’ access to social capital via participation in community activities and their children’s health in Indonesia. We exploit the advantages of longitudinal data and community fixed effects to mitigate some of the concerns about spuriousness and reverse causality that predominate in this literature. We find that children from families with relatively low levels of human and financial capital fare better with respect to health status when their mothers are more active participants in community organizations. In fact, the association between maternal participation and child health is strong, positive, and statistically significant only for children from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds, as measured by their mother’s educational level and economic resources within the household. The results suggest that in resource-constrained settings, community involvement may benefit disadvantaged families, possibly by providing resources and information that would otherwise be inaccessible

Subjective socioeconomic status and health: Relationships reconsidered

Subjective status, an individual's perception of her socioeconomic standing, is a robust predictor of physical health in many societies. To date, competing interpretations of this correlation remain unresolved. Using longitudinal data on 8430 older adults from the 2000 and 2007 waves of the Indonesia Family Life Survey, we test these oft-cited links. As in other settings, perceived status is a robust predictor of self-rated health, and also of physical functioning and nurse-assessed general health. These relationships persist in the presence of controls for unobserved traits, such as difficult-to-measure aspects of family background and persistent aspects of personality. However, we find evidence that these links likely represent bi-directional effects. Declines in health that accompany aging are robust predictors of declines in perceived socioeconomic status, net of observed changes to the economic profile of respondents. The results thus underscore the social value afforded good health status

Dependency, Democracy, and Infant Mortality: A Quantitative, Cross-National Analysis of Less Developed Countries

This study presents quantitative, sociological models designed to account for cross-national variation in infant mortality rates. We consider variables linked to four different theoretical perspectives: the economic modernization, the social modernization, the political modernization, and the dependency perspectives. The study is based on a panel regression analysis of a sample of fifty-nine developing countries. Our preliminary analysis based on additive models replicates prior studies to the extent that we find that indicators linked to economic and social modernization have beneficial effects on infant mortality. We also find support for hypotheses derived from the dependency perspective suggesting that multinational corporate penetration fosters higher levels of infant mortality. Subsequent analysis incorporating interaction effects suggest that the level of political democracy conditions the effects of dependency relationships based upon exports, investments from multinational corporations, and international lending institutions. Transnational economic linkages associated with exports, multinational corporations, and international lending institutions adversely affect infant mortality more strongly at lower levels of democracy than at higher levels of democracy; that is intranational, political factors interact with the international, economic forces to affect infant mortality. We conclude with some brief policy recommendations and suggestions for the direction of future research