Abstract Deadly violence has drastically increased in Latin America, posing a serious threat to women's sexual and reproductive health. Previous research has documented both increases and declines in youth-to-adulthood transitions associated with exposure to violence globally. However, there has been a lack of comparative studies focusing on multiple life-course transitions. This study investigated the impact of community violence on women's life-course transitions in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala. Drawing on nationally representative surveys and homicide statistics, fixed ef ..read more

Abstract Behind the steady march of progress toward longer life expectancy in many low-mortality countries, there have been setbacks even before the Covid-19 pandemic. In this paper, we use an exploratory approach to describe the temporal structure, age patterns, and geographic aspects of life expectancy reversals. We find that drops in life expectancy are often followed by larger than average improvements, which tells us that most reversals are transitory with little long-term influence. The age structure of mortality decline when life expectancy falls is tilted toward older ages, a pattern t ..read more

Abstract This paper explores the role of family trajectories during childhood in explaining inequalities by maternal education in children's math and reading skills using harmonized, longitudinal, and nationally representative surveys, which follow children over the course of primary and lower secondary school in four high-income countries (England, France, Germany, and the United States). As single parenthood and family transitions are more likely among less educated parents and are associated with fewer resources for children, we explore whether growing up outside a stable two-parent family ..read more

Abstract We introduce a new demographic indicator, the remittances-adjusted support ratio (RASR), which incorporates the support offered through remittances into the existing support ratio (SR). Remittances have increased rapidly in recent decades due to improved technology, and they play a crucial role in the countries that send migrants abroad. This is important as many countries are still undergoing their demographic transitions, and here remittances are particularly relevant. Our formulation of the RASR suggests an alternative in which population pressures are alleviated through migration ..read more

Abstract The effects of climate change on human migration have received widespread attention, driven in part by concerns about potential large-scale population displacements. Recent studies demonstrate that climate-migration linkages are often complex, and climatic variability may increase, decrease, or have null effects on migration. However, the use of noncomparable analytic strategies across studies makes it difficult to disentangle substantive variation in climate effects across populations and places from methodological artifacts. We address this gap by using harmonized census and survey ..read more

Population and Development Review, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 1-6, March 2024 ..read more

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has potential large-scale impacts on population dynamics. Yet, recent theories and empirical analyses fall short of fully articulating the extent and nature of the pandemic's influence on birth rates at the aggregate level. This study advances the comprehension of fertility dynamics amid the pandemic by focusing on the reproductive process. The effects of the pandemic on conceptions and pregnancy terminations may exhibit considerable variability, which, in turn, could dictate the observed patterns in birth rates during the pandemic. Employing the data from the Pe ..read more

Abstract Demographers have long been interested in how fertility ideals vary in response to perceived existential threats. Although migration scholars document the increasingly threatening nature of U.S. immigration policies, little research explores how these policies shape the fertility ideals of those most affected by them. To that end, we exploit spatiotemporal variation in states’ evolving immigrant policy contexts to understand the effects of different policies on the ideal family size of Hispanics—a group who is most likely to be stereotyped as undocumented and most likely to live in mi ..read more

Population and Development Review, EarlyView ..read more

Abstract The disparity in life expectancy between white and black Americans exceeds five years for men and three years for women. While prior research has investigated the roles of healthcare, health behaviors, biological risk, socioeconomic status, and life course effects on black mortality, the literature on the geographic origins of the gap is more limited. This study examines how the black–white life expectancy gap varies across counties and how much of the national gap is attributable to within-county racial inequality versus differences between counties. The estimates suggest that over 9 ..read more