Women returning to their natal homes for pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum is common and understudied in South Asia, with important implications for maternal and newborn health policies, as well as data quality and interpretation. Using data from 1252 women residing in a Health and Demographic Surveillance Site in Maharashtra, India we explore timing, duration and associated socio-economic factors with Temporary Childbirth Migration (TCM). Our overall goal is to develop a definition of temporary childbirth migration and situate it within demographic migration theory. Most (80%) of women migrated for over 1 month in the last trimester of pregnancy, with a sizeable proportion (22%) departing immediately after delivery. Socio-demographic factors were not associated with migrating during pregnancy; migrating postpartum was associated with younger age and higher education. Based on these findings, we propose a definition of Temporary childbirth Migration as a form of migration from husbands to natal homes and back, for at least one month duration, with departure and return at any time in the perinatal period. Given the potentially large number of women moving location for an extended duration in every pregnancy (in a country of over 1.4 billion), programs providing services to pregnant women and newborns should take this phenomenon into consideration. Additionally, data collection efforts at the clinical and household level should understand that women's place of delivery or receipt of prenatal or postnatal services may differ from her normal place of residence.

Limited data are available on the characteristics and outcomes both of people who have and who have not had an abortion. Administrative data sources contain information on aggregate abortion counts and some demographic characteristics describing individuals who had an abortion but not on those who did not have an abortion. They are therefore of limited use for analyzing the characteristics, reproductive behaviors, and attitudes associated with abortion risk. Direct questions in population representative surveys yield downwardly biased estimates of abortion and likely differential underreporting of abortion by socio-demographic characteristics. In the present study, we evaluate the effectiveness of an indirect survey method, the list experiment, for improving estimates of abortion risk and differentials in population-representative surveys. We estimate cumulative-lifetime abortion incidence in 2017 and five-year incidence in 2021 using two cross-sectional surveys administered in Delaware and Maryland and evaluate the five-year estimates against external benchmarks from administrative data. We use multivariate regression with the list-experiment data to examine abortion incidence by socio-demographic predictors. We find that list-experiment estimates of five-year abortion incidence are similar to estimates calculated from external data: that cumulative lifetime abortion incidence increases monotonically with age, and that five-year incidence is inverse U-shaped. Black adults are found to be much more likely to have had an abortion both in the past five-years and over the reproductive lifetime, before and after controlling for age, parity, relationship status, education, and household income. We conclude positively about the validity and utility of the list experiment method.

U.S. females live longer than males due to a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and health factors. Prior research has underscored unhealthy behaviors as particularly risky for males and lower socioeconomic status as a risk factor for females in shaping sex differences in adult mortality. But this research has largely examined mortality during mid- and older-adulthood, with most deaths occurring at older ages. Our study focuses on sex differences in mortality among a cohort of U.S. adolescents followed into adulthood, ages 12-46 (N=18,921). We employ Cox proportional hazard models and data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which was recently linked to mortality records through December of 2021. The hazard of dying is much greater (HR=1.69; p<.001) for male compared to female adolescents and young adults, with larger disparities for external compared to internal causes of death. Sex differences in mortality are reduced but persist when controlling for childhood experiences, health behaviors, risky behaviors, and social ties. The relatively poor mental and physical health of females suppresses the differences; that is, sex differences in mortality would be even larger were it not for the poorer mental and physical health of young females compared with males. The findings point to risk factors that if improved could reduce mortality for both U.S. males and females, while reducing sex differences in mortality among younger adults. Such improvements could increase life expectancy of the U.S. population and reduce mortality and sex differences at older ages.

To quantify the role of state-level lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+)-related policies on experiences of discrimination in a population-representative sample of partnered individuals.

Despite a developing literature on the consequences of parental incarceration, its effects on childhood obesity are not evident. Our research project fills this knowledge gap by describing the relationship between parental incarceration and childhood obesity among children aged 3 to 15 and determining if and how this association differs across race. We use four consecutive waves of data on 3,302 children from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Our analysis finds little evidence that parental incarceration influences the probability of obesity among all children as a group. Moreover, our findings reveal critical racial disparities in the relationship between parental incarceration and childhood obesity. In particular, parental lifetime incarceration is not associated with risks of obesity for White or Hispanic children but is associated with a significantly decreased chance of obesity for Black children. This research effort can initiate an interdisciplinary conversation on the important intersection of family and corrections in order to alleviate the intergenerational erosion of physical health and well-being.

Adverse childhood events (ACE) may have lasting consequences throughout the life course. We focus on one particular type of ACE, parental loss in Cambodia-a country that lost nearly 25% of its population during the 1975-79 Khmer-Rouge regime-and on mental health disorders, one of the potential mechanisms through which ACE may have long-term consequences. Self-reports of symptoms that map on to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM) criteria for anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were collected from 4,405 adults aged 20 and over. We first assess exposure to traumatic events and the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and PTSD using the DSM and alternative criteria. Based on the DSM criteria and previously validated Likert-scale thresholds, we find a high prevalence of anxiety (56.0%), depression (42.8%), and PTSD (2.3%), and even higher levels even among KRR survivors. We then use logit models to analyze the effect of parental loss before age 20 on the likelihood of having experienced traumatic events and experiencing mental health disorders. We find the loss of one parent increases the likelihood of full-PTSD symptoms, but the loss of both parents does not. These findings may result from positive selection into better-off households for orphans whose parents have both died but may also reflect the grief-related difficulties faced by the surviving parent of paternal or maternal orphans. While alternative thresholds for PTSD produced higher prevalence estimates, these measures did not perform better for assessing the effect of parental loss on mental health.

Not all U.S. populations have equal access to a primary care provider (PCP). This study presents one of the first population-based evidence of inequities in access to PCPs at the intersection of race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender.

Research on the legacies of historical redlining has lacked nationally representative and multilevel data. We advance this literature by analyzing new data that links historical redlining maps to the residential addresses of participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a diverse and national cohort of adolescents who transitioned to adulthood between the mid-1990s and late 2010s (N=10,897). We report three key findings. First, while most participants did not live within the boundaries of historical redlining maps, Black (22%) and Hispanic (28%) participants were several times more likely than their White peers (8%) to live in either a formerly yellow- or red-lined urban area in adolescence. Second, adolescents who resided in yellow- or red-lined areas also tended to live in the most disadvantaged households and neighborhoods and attained the lowest levels of socioeconomic status in adulthood. Third, Black and White adolescents who lived in rural areas also experienced similar or worse adult outcomes than their peers who lived in redlined urban areas. We also find anomalous but inconclusive patterns for the small group of Black and Hispanic participants who lived in historically affluent "green-lined" areas in adolescence, including poor adult health and high risk of contact with the criminal justice system. Given these findings, we outline avenues for future research that could include historical redlining maps, but also expand beyond urban redlining to consider nonmetropolitan areas and other contemporary indicators of structural racism.

Most health disparities and population health scholarship homogenizes Black women, masking within-group distinctions in their lived experience and health. Moreover, the stress literature tends to focus on the health consequences of one stressor (e.g., financial strain) or a single domain from which stressors emanate (e.g., family relationships). Filling these literature gaps, this study integrates stress theory and the intersectionality framework to investigate ethnicity and nativity status heterogeneity in cardiovascular disease risk factors (i.e., hypertension and obesity) and stress profiles of US Black women while also testing for interrelationships among social status, stress exposure, and health. Drawing from the National Survey of American Life ( = 2872), the analysis proceeded with binary logistic regression models to ascertain the associations among ethnic-nativity status, stress, and cardiovascular disease risk. Study results revealed higher rates of obesity for US-born Afro-Caribbean women, followed by US-born African American and foreign-born Afro-Caribbean women. US-born African American women, however, were at greatest risk for hypertension. Differential exposure to stressors inclusive of everyday discrimination, stressful life events, financial strain, and negative interactions with family members did not explain ethnic-nativity differences in hypertension and obesity. Nonetheless, the association between specific stressors and health differed by ethnic-nativity status. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Population projections are used by a number of local agencies to better prepare for the future resource needs of counties, ensuring that educational, health, housing, and economic demands of individuals are met. Meeting the specific needs of a county's population, such as what resources to provide, where to target resources, and ensure an equitable distribution of those resources, requires population projections which are both demographically detailed, such as by age, race, and ethnicity, and geographically precise, such as at the census tract level. Despite this need, an evaluation of which methods are best suited to produce population projections at this level are lacking. In this study, we evaluate the accuracy of several cohort-based methods for small area population projections by race and ethnicity. We apply these methods to population projections of King County, Washington and assess the validity of projections using past population estimates. We find a clear pattern that demonstrates while simplified methods perform well in near term forecasts, methods which employ smoothing strategies perform better in long-term forecasting scenarios. Furthermore, we demonstrate that model's incorporating multiple stages of smoothing can provide detailed insights into the projected population size of King county and the places and groups which will most contribute to this growth. Detailed projections, such as those provided by multi-stage smoothing methods, enable city planners and policy makers a detailed view of the future structure of their county's population and provide for them a resource to better meet the needs of future populations.

Previous research has shown that employment is an important social context affecting fertility, yet relatively little is known about the extent to which work characteristics affect fertility expectations. Using over 25 years of data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we analyzed the associations between part-time work and characteristics associated with autonomy over working time, specifically self-employment and managerial/professional occupation, and childbearing expectations among women ages 18-45 (N=4,415). Logistic regression models for longitudinal data reveal that work characteristics are significantly associated with fertility expectations, but that the specific nature of the relationship varies by parity. Among women with one child, those working part-time had predicted probabilities of expecting to have additional children that were 2% higher than those working full-time. In contrast, among women without any children, those working part-time had predicted probabilities that were 2% lower than those working full-time. Similar contrasting relationships by parity were found when comparing self-employed women to employees and managers/professionals to those in other occupations. Findings were consistent across racial and ethnic groups. These results suggest that different mechanisms link work characteristics to fertility plans for mothers and non-mothers, specifically that role incompatibility and work-family conflict are more salient for mothers but that financial strain is so for non-mothers.

Federal legislation and judicial intervention led to significant transformation in the U.S. education system during the early to mid-20th century. These changes may differentiate older adults in their experiences of aging, particularly at the intersection of race, gender, and cohort, but are not well documented among current cohorts of older adults. Our study addresses this gap by providing rich, descriptive information on the educational experiences of U.S. adults who attended primary or secondary school between 1915 and 1977. We used data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative, prospective study of U.S. adults over age 50 years. The HRS collected information on respondents' schooling history and experiences through a Life History Mail Survey (LHMS). We restricted our sample to age-eligible HRS-LHMS respondents who self-identified as non-Hispanic White or non-Hispanic Black and completed at least 75% of their primary or secondary schooling in the U.S. (n=10,632). Educational experiences, defined as pre-k to post-secondary education, varied across cohort, regardless of race or gender. Greater course offerings, improvements in learning support, and increasing exposure to integrated schools occurred across successive cohorts. We found the highest rates of enrollment in college preparatory curriculum and foreign-language courses as well as diagnosed learning differences in cohorts born after 1948. Among White adults, many of the gender differences in educational experiences documented in the oldest cohort were still found among the most recent cohort. Few gender differences, however, were found for Black adults regardless of cohort. Conversely, most race inequities in educational experiences persisted. Such inequities may be an important source of continued differences in experiences of aging observed across demographic groups.

In rural high-fertility settings where people depend on subsistence agriculture, children are expected to provide material support to their parents in later life, with implications for physical health and material well-being of parents. Substantial research has examined these material consequences. Fewer studies have examined the implications of parenthood for subjective well-being in these contexts, in contrast to a larger body of research in low-fertility contexts. The existing studies of parenthood and subjective well-being in high-fertility contexts suggest that this relationship depends on parents' gender and age, but do not distinguish between the impact of parent life stage and the impact of child age and other child characteristics. In this study, we draw on data from a population-based survey of ever-married women in rural Gaza Province, Mozambique, to show how mid-life women's subjective well-being, measured as life satisfaction, is related to the number, age, and residential status of children. We also investigate whether the association between children's characteristics and mother's life satisfaction is mediated by other domains related to anticipated returns to childbearing, such as household economic conditions and mother's physical and mental health. Results show that having young children in the household is negatively associated with life satisfaction, while having older children living outside the country is positively associated with life satisfaction. These associations are not fully explained by potential mechanisms such as economic conditions. We reflect on the implications of these findings in a context of changing livelihood strategies.

In 2006, the Quebec government implemented a parental leave program more generous than the scheme available through the Canadian federal Employment Insurance (EI) program. It was aimed at maintaining the personal disposable income after a birth, especially for women whose income exceeds the maximum insurable earnings of EI. In this article, we assess whether the implementation of the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) was associated with an increase in the fertility in Quebec, especially for highly educated women. We use data from the rotating panels of the Canadian Labor Force Survey. We test the effect of the implementation of the QPIP on fertility by comparing Quebec and Ontario, which kept the federal EI scheme, before and after the implementation of the QPIP. We adapt the difference in differences method (DiD) to the modeling of the fertility schedule using Poisson regression. We estimate fertility by educational levels within each of the four groups of the DiD design by integrating the estimated fertility schedules. Our results show that the implementation of the QPIP was associated with an increase in fertility in Quebec. The magnitude of the increase varies by educational levels: 17% for women who did not complete secondary education, 46% for those who completed it, and 27% for women who earned a university diploma.

Higher levels of both individual education and community education may facilitate improved sexual and reproductive health knowledge, but our understanding of this relationship in sub-Saharan Africa remains limited. Drawing on human capital and social learning theories, and Demographic Health Survey data from Uganda, we examine the independent and interactive associations between individual and community education and two outcomes-HIV prevention knowledge and knowledge of different contraceptive methods-including differences by gender. Consistent with human capital and social learning theories, results from multilevel regression models show that both individual education and community education levels are independently and positively associated with more accurate sexual and reproductive health knowledge. Further, in support of the idea that human capital and social learning theories work in tandem, we find that the association between individual education and HIV knowledge is stronger in less educated communities, and grows weaker as community education increases, for both men and women. Similarly, for men, but not women, the association between individual education and contraceptive knowledge is stronger in less educated communities and weaker as community education increases. Among women, individual education was strongly and positively associated with contraceptive knowledge, an association that varied little across more or less educated communities. Our findings suggest that policy makers should consider community education levels when developing priorities for sexual and reproductive health knowledge interventions.

Despite low U.S. fertility rates since the Great Recession, two-child norms remain pervasive, suggesting individuals are unable to achieve their goals. To understand what may be driving the apparent mismatch between goals and behavior, we focus on pregnancy avoidance, as individuals may be deciding against births in the short term rather than deciding not to have any, or any more, children. Further, we incorporate subjective evaluations of the future related to economic and relational factors as well as objective socioeconomic indicators, drawing from the Narratives of the Future framework and Easterlin's theory about expected standard of living. We use data from the 2018-2020 wave of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study ( = 880), a population-based dataset, to examine short-term pregnancy avoidance among adults aged 29-36. We find that higher levels of personal economic pessimism and concerns about having a good relationship in the future are associated with greater importance of avoiding a pregnancy in the short term, even when controlling for objective characteristics such as economic hardship, relationship status, and other sociodemographic covariates. The results highlight the need to incorporate both subjective and objective statuses in research on fertility decision-making, and the implications of these findings point to short-term pregnancy avoidance and fertility postponement as a potential mechanism underlying contemporary low birth rates in the U.S.

Working age (25-64) mortality in the US has been increasing for decades, driven in part by rising deaths due to drug overdose, as well as increases in suicide and alcohol-related mortality. These deaths have been hypothesized by some to be due to despair, but this has rarely been empirically tested. For despair to explain mortality due to alcohol-related liver disease, suicide, and drug overdose, it must first predict the behaviors that lead to such causes of death. To that end, we aim to answer two research questions. First, does despair predict the behaviors that are antecedent to the "deaths of despair"? Second, what measures and domains of despair are most important? We use data from over 6000 individuals at five waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and apply supervised machine learning to assess the role of despair in predicting self-destructive behaviors associated with these causes of death. Comparing predictive performance within each outcome using measures of despair to benchmark models of clinical and prior behavioral predictors, we evaluate the added predictive value of despair above and beyond established risk factors. We find that despair underperforms compared to clinical risk factors for suicidal ideation and heavy drinking, but over performs compared to clinical risk factors and prior behaviors for illegal drug use and prescription drug misuse. We also compare model performance and feature importance across outcomes; our ability to predict thoughts of suicide, drug abuse and misuse, and heavy drinking differs depending on the behavior, and the relative importance of different indicators of despair varies across outcomes as well. Our findings suggest that the self-destructive behaviors are distinct and the pathways from despair to self-destructive behavior varied. The results draw into question the relevance of despair as a unifying framework for understanding the current crisis in midlife health and mortality.

As young adults, the Millennial generation emerged as the largest and most racially and ethnically diverse generation in U.S. history. These unique demographic characteristics, along with more progressive self-reported views on racial and ethnic issues, prompted some to label this generation as a demographic bridge to America's diverse future. This article examines whether these unique characteristics translate into greater neighborhood racial diversity and integration. Specifically, this study sets out to answer whether the neighborhoods where Millennial young adults live are more racially and ethnically diverse and situated in less segregated metropolitan areas than those where young adults from prior generations resided. Using 1990-2020 Census data, we find that young adult Millennials are living in less segregated neighborhoods than their counterparts from previous generations. This pattern holds whether examining the segregation of White young adults from the total population or restricting the analysis to segregation solely among young adults. We further find that a greater presence of White young adult Millennials is positively associated with neighborhood diversity. However, our decomposition analysis, which disaggregates segregation to the agegroup level, suggests that increased uneven sorting among Late Millennial young adults is also driving racial imbalances within neighborhoods among younger and older age groups.

State-level social policy and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population concentration are key measures that are often used as indicators reflecting geographic social climate. Still, research has yet to investigate how they may be interrelated, including the degree to which the LGBT population are subject to certain policies. Using population-based experimental data from the Household Pulse Survey and policy measures from the Movement Advancement Project, we compared measures of state-level policy and concentration of the LGBT population for 2022. After calculating the correlation between these two constructs, the authors identified state-level variation in these measures for each of the 50 states and Washington, DC. With a correlation of 0.58, the findings revealed variation at the state level and indicated that LGBT population concentration and state-level LGBT policy do not necessarily reflect synonymous social phenomena and constitute distinct but complementary measures for use in constructing indices of structural heterosexism and social climate.

Restrictive abortion policies have generated reductions in abortion access, increased travel distance to abortion clinics as a result of clinic closures, and produced declines in maternal health outcomes. This study explores the effects of Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB8), the most restrictive bill prior to the overturning of , on abortion access in Texas. We used a difference-in-differences approach to explore the heterogeneous effects of SB8 on abortion access for communities of varying socioeconomic statuses and travel distances using 16 months of SafeGraph Inc. mobile phone pattern data for 21 Texas and four Oklahoma abortion clinics between January 1, 2021, and April 30, 2022. Implementation of SB8 was associated with 34% fewer abortion clinic visits in Texas than in Oklahoma. The effects of SB8 on access to abortion care across state borders had a disproportionately greater impact on women in low-income communities. This study provides further evidence of the discriminatory impacts of SB8 in Texas.

Son preference and prenatal sex-selection against females (PSS) among British Asian communities, raised considerable media attention, leading to parliamentary debates on abortion laws in Britain in 2015. PSS among India-born mothers in the 1990s was indirectly evidenced in past UK study by analysing sex-ratios at birth. However, we lack reliable quantitative evidence to document the practice in Britain since 2005 and regulations remained unchanged, offering a unique opportunity to test the need (or not) for abortion regulation to curtail PSS practice. Using annual sex ratio at birth counts from 1969 to 2018 and applying novel indicators, I found that sex-selection prevalence among India-born mothers is reduced in recent years, from its peak at about 4% in the 1990-2005 period. This decline is independent of specific legislation on sex-selective abortion and suggests a weakening of son preference. A reduction in prenatal sex-selection prevalence in Britain, shows that curbing the practice does not request stricter (sex-selection) abortion law. The findings support policy approaches addressing root-causes of gender preference to reduce PSS, while preserving current abortion rights.