For decades, population research has been interested in the complex relationship between child mortality and fertility, with a key focus on identifying hoarding behavior (i.e., fertility response to expected aggregate child mortality). Using unique data from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health, we investigate the impact of individual-specific subjective expectations about infant mortality on fertility behavior. We instrument the potentially endogenous infant mortality expectations with the average of parents’ ratings of children's health to address the potential for omitted variable bias, such as parental preference for health. Consistent with the hoarding mechanism, we find that a 10-percentage-point increase in community-level child mortality expectations leads to a 14-percentage-point increase in the propensity to have a child in the next two years from a baseline propensity of 39%.

Norman Ryder's (1965) seminal essay on cohort analysis has inspired generations of demographers and sociologists to investigate social change by identifying unique “effects” of age, period, and cohort (APC) on various outcomes. However, despite advances in technical sophistication, APC analysis remains highly controversial, exacerbated by the lack of clear guidance in Ryder's work on conducting a cohort analysis. This research note draws on unpublished archival materials to elucidate the key components of Ryder's cohort approach, revealing his main steps for analyzing APC data. Importantly, Ryder rejected conventional APC analysis as it has developed in the literature. Instead of extracting distinct APC “effects,” he aimed to differentiate intracohort from intercohort trends, which together form Ryderian comparative cohort careers. Unlike traditional APC analysis, Ryder's approach is explicitly cohort-based, diachronic, and purely descriptive, requiring no additional information external to the data. Consequently, a Ryderian cohort analysis can help reconcile seemingly divergent findings and establish a foundation for consensus across multiple domains. To facilitate methodological and theoretical development, this note outlines the primary steps for conducting a cohort analysis from a Ryderian perspective and concludes with practical recommendations for further research.

Whether each generation of Americans continues to economically surpass the previous one has recently been called into question. We construct a posttax, posttransfer income measure from 1963 to 2023 based on the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement that allows us to consistently compare the economic well-being of five generations of Americans at ages 36–40. We find that Millennials had a real median household income that was 20% higher than that of the previous generation, a slowdown from the growth rate of the Silent Generation (36%) and Baby Boomers (26%), but similar to that of Generation X (16%). The slowdown for younger generations largely resulted from stalled growth in work hours among women. Progress for Millennials younger than 30 has also remained robust, though largely due to greater reliance on their parents. Additionally, lifetime income gains for younger generations far outweigh their higher educational costs.

We examine the earnings assimilation of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants using an innovative strategy to estimate which individuals may lack legal work authorization. Our strategy relies on restricted-use data linking respondents of the Current Population Survey to Social Security records. A successful match with Social Security records, along with survey information, is used as evidence that an immigrant is authorized. Using a successful match with Social Security records allows us to rule out as being unauthorized half of all individuals otherwise classified as unauthorized. Our results indicate that unauthorized immigrant men have significantly lower earnings than authorized immigrant men over the first 15 years since arrival. However, despite facing additional obstacles, immigrants without work authorization make the same amount of progress in catching up with the earnings of native Whites. Unauthorized immigrant women have similar earnings as women with work authorization for much of their careers. Overall, we find a pattern of persistent inequality whereby both authorized and unauthorized Hispanic immigrants make modest progress catching up with natives’ earnings. We test alternative explanations for the observed pattern in earnings trajectories and find that the occupation and industry in which immigrants are employed, along with the number of hours worked, appear to explain a large part of the disparity relative to native Whites.

The shift of immigration enforcement to local communities has amplified anti-immigrant sentiment and enabled the unprecedented expansion of mass deportation systems. This study examines one such effort-the 287(g) program, which empowers local law enforcement to enforce U.S. immigration laws-and its effects on the residential segregation of Latinos. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares counties that implemented 287(g) with applicant counties that did not implement, we find that these policies significantly slowed declines in Latino‒White segregation, particularly in early-adopting Southern counties, where enforcement was most aggressive. We detect no effects on Black‒White or Latino‒Black segregation. Our analysis also suggests that these effects are driven by shifts in residential mobility and migration behaviors among Latino households, as enforcement amplified economic vulnerability, fear, and spatial isolation. These results indicate that interior immigration enforcement functions as a structural barrier to Latino integration, with downstream consequences for racial stratification and neighborhood inequality.

This study revisits the polygyny‒fertility relationship in sub-Saharan Africa amid significant sociodemographic transformations, including declines in both fertility rates and the prevalence of polygyny. Using data from multiple rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys across 23 African countries, we examine the contribution of polygyny to reductions in the total fertility rate (TFR), explore how the polygyny‒fertility relationship has evolved over time, and assess changes in the total number of children ever born, number of recent births, ideal fertility, and the desire for another child by polygyny status. Our findings show that the decline in polygyny has substantially contributed to reductions in TFR. While realized fertility—measured by children ever born and recent births—has declined for all married women, reductions have been greater among women in monogamous unions. Fertility preferences, including ideal fertility and the desire for another child, have decreased only among women in monogamous unions, while remaining stable for those in polygynous unions. Additionally, except for children ever born, we find minimal variation in fertility outcomes by wife's rank within polygynous unions. Taken together, these results underscore the complex influence of marriage systems on fertility and highlight the distinct fertility patterns of women in monogamous versus polygynous unions.

Prior research on the mortality effects of retirement has rarely been informative in the sense of finding a statistically significant effect. However, this does not necessarily indicate the absence of a mortality effect of retirement. While earlier studies assumed an instantaneous change in mortality risk upon retirement, the mortality effect of retirement may cumulatively evolve upon retirement. Using the Health and Retirement Study and fuzzy regression discontinuity and kink designs, I estimate mortality effects of retirement and retirement duration. Consistent with prior work, I find no evidence for a sudden jump in mortality risk at retirement. By contrast, I find that each additional year of retirement duration increases mortality risk by 0.9 percentage points, suggesting growing inequalities in mortality risk between retirees and counterfactual nonretirees. The positive, cumulative mortality effect of retirement at the Social Security eligibility age has important implications for an increase in the eligibility age, population health, and welfare programs to support older people in the United States.

Sub-Saharan Africa's fertility decline has lagged behind that of other regions. Using large-scale, individual-level data, I provide new evidence on how fertility in sub-Saharan Africa compares with that in East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America by examining differences in fertility outcomes by grade level across regions. Unlike prior research that compared aggregate fertility and education outcomes, I estimate fertility outcomes separately for each combination of region, area of residence, age group, and grade level. I find that differences in fertility between sub-Saharan Africa and other regions increase with education up to the end of primary school and then rapidly decrease. There is little consistent evidence of differences among women with secondary education or higher. Moreover, for grade levels where fertility is significantly higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions, the differences are substantially smaller for surviving children than for children ever born. Using women's literacy as a proxy for school quality, I show that the results for literacy rates follow a similar pattern to the fertility outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that higher offspring mortality and lower quality of primary schooling contribute to higher fertility in sub-Saharan Africa compared with other regions.

Understanding the circumstances in which children migrate is important to ensure their well-being. Yet, child migration in sub-Saharan Africa is not easy to measure. Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) provide an excellent opportunity to estimate child migration in the region. I examine out-migration patterns of children younger than 15 in eastern and southern Africa, where adult mortality is high, fostering is prevalent, and households are dynamic. Using longitudinal data pooled from 15 HDSS, covering roughly 451,000 children, I find that most children who migrate do so with their mothers (tied migration). Moreover, an intergenerational link between a mother's and her child's mobility is evident: children whose mothers are migrants are more likely to migrate themselves. Despite some expectations of agency in child mobility in later childhood (for education or work), children who out-migrate independently of their mothers are often orphaned or have mothers living elsewhere. Maternal death is a forceful driver of child migration, especially within six months following a mother's death. Thus, orphaned migrants are exposed to the double shock of losing a parent and a change in their immediate environment. However, children in larger households tend to migrate less, somewhat dampening the mobility of orphans.

We use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate whether and how intergenerational income stratification mediates the long arm of childhood income for mature adult health. Using three different mediation techniques, we analyze prospective high-quality data on childhood income (ages 0-17) and six health outcomes (ages 40-67): self-rated health, psychological distress, heart attack, stroke, and life-threatening and non-life-threatening chronic conditions. We focus on the mediating role of adult income (ages 30-39). For comparison, we also analyze several alternative potential mediators, including education, health behaviors, and occupation. The results show that adult income is a critical mediator in the long arm of childhood income, mediating almost all the relationship for self-rated health and psychological distress, roughly one half of the relationship for heart attack and stroke, and roughly one third of the relationship for life-threatening chronic conditions. The models also confirm that childhood income has a significant mediated or indirect relationship with health outcomes. Further analyses provide evidence that adult income plays a greater mediating role than the alternative potential mediators. Altogether, the evidence supports intergenerational income stratification as a key mediating process within the long arm of childhood income.