Household demographic factors as life cycle determinants of land use in the Amazon

This paper seeks to broaden the application of demographyto environmental studies by complementing existing macro-level approaches, which feature aggregate populations, with a micro-level approach that highlights household life cycles. I take up the case of small farm households in the Brazilian Amazon to present a theoretical framework that identifies demographic characteristics which dispose families to engage in different forms of land use as household age structures change. Empirical models show that net of theeffects of farmer background, neighborhood context, institutional context, and off-farm incomes, demographic variables indicative of the household life cycle exert significant effects on the prominence of land uses with distinct environmental ramifications. The findings not only reveal micro-level demographic factors which affect Amazon land cover, they yield implications forfuture changes in rainforest landscapes in northern Brazil, and suggest household life cycle models as an avenue for further demographic research on environmental change in Latin America and other contexts.     

The Rise and Prominence of Skip-Generation Households in Lower- and Middle-Income Countries

Investigations into changes in household formations across lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) rarely consider skip-generation households. Yet, demographic, social, and economic forces increasingly encourage skip-generation household formations. We examine trends and changes in the prevalence of skip-generation households from 1990 to 2016, examining households, adults aged 60+, and children under 15, across 49 countries using household roster data from Demographic and Health Surveys. Analysis takes place in stages, first describing trends in skip-generation households across countries and next providing explanatory analyses using multilevel modeling to assess whether, and the degree to which, country-level characteristics like AIDS mortality and female labor force participation explain trends in the probability that a household is, or that an individual resides in, a skip-generation household. Results indicate extensive increases in skip-generation households in many LMICs, although there is also variation. The increases and variations are not well-explained by the country-level characteristics in our models, suggesting other underlying reasons for the rise and prominence of skip-generation households across LMICs.     

环境退化地区家庭人口对土地利用的影响研究——以中国西北毛乌素沙地为例

微观层面模型对于区分不同的人口群体以更好地明确环境退化的责任主体及其原因具有重要价值,对不同的土地利用方式进行经济区分是联接家庭人口特征与土地覆盖结果的重要手段。基于扩展的恰亚诺夫理论框架,文章利用2007—2008年两次调查所获293个农户样本数据,采用OLS和logit多变量模型实证分析毛乌素沙地家庭人口和其他因素对土地利用的影响。研究结果表明:(1)家庭人口因素对毛乌素沙地农户的土地利用产生重要影响;(2)毛乌素沙地主要土地利用的环境影响也遵循家庭生命周期的过程;(3)毛乌素沙地农户在减少有助于土壤修复利用活动的同时面临上升的退化风险。     

Household demographic change and land use/land cover change in the Brazilian Amazon

Demographic interest in population and environment has grown in recent decades. One of the most prominent research areas in this tradition addresses the impact of population on land use and land cover change. Building on this tradition, we examine the effects of household demographic composition on land use and land cover on small farms in two study areas in the Brazilian Amazon. Fixed effects regression models of used area and forested area show few consistent effects of changes in household demography on land use and land cover change. Effects are inconsistent with the household life cycle model that currently dominates the literature on household demographic effects in frontiers. Changes in the number of children and women, particularly young women, have the most significant effects on land use and land cover change. We conclude by arguing that households strategically access cash for investment in agriculture and that specific strategies are determined by economic and institutional context.

Household diversity and dynamics of recent immigrants in Australia

The family and friends that immigrants live with are important sources of assistance and support, especially in the period immediately following migration. The paper uses data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to examine the living arrangements of recent immigrants, the transitions in household structure they experience during the first few years of settlement and whether the changes in living arrangements are related to other changes that immigrants experience during the early settlement period such as changes in marital and employment status. Multivariate logistic regression models are used to examine the relation between immigrants’ characteristics and their experience of changes in living arrangements. Many live in extended family households soon after arrival, but set up their own households when they are more settled. Changes in immigrants’ household structure and living arrangements during the first few years of settlement are usually related to age, visa category of migration and change in marital status.     

Fertility and land availability in rural Brazil

Differences between the marital fertility of the agricultural frontier and that of the more settled rural areas of southern Brazil are analyzed in this paper. Fertility rates derived from 1970 census data appear to decrease as the degree of settlement increases, suggesting an experience parallel to the decline in U.S. rural fertility in the late nineteenth century, which Easterlin and others have attributed to increased scarcity of land for starting new farm households. Multivariate analysis of the Brazilian data shows parallels between the two situations but also reveals that the importance of literacy, child survival, and access to land is relatively greater than that of the availability of land for explaining fertility differentials in Brazil.     

Drivers of land use change and household determinants of sustainability in smallholder farming systems of Eastern Uganda

Smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa have undergone changes in land use, productivity and sustainability. Understanding of the drivers that have led to changes in land use in these systems and factors that influence the systems’ sustainability is useful to guide appropriate targeting of intervention strategies for improvement. We studied low input Teso farming systems in eastern Uganda from 1960 to 2001 in a place-based analysis combined with a comparative analysis of similar low input systems in southern Mali. This study showed that policy-institutional factors next to population growth have driven land use changes in the Teso systems, and that nutrient balances of farm households are useful indicators to identify their sustainability. During the period of analysis, the fraction of land under cultivation increased from 46 to 78%, and communal grazing lands nearly completely disappeared. Cropping diversified over time; cassava overtook cotton and millet in importance, and rice emerged as an alternative cash crop. Impacts of political instability, such as the collapse of cotton marketing and land management institutions, of communal labour arrangements and aggravation of cattle rustling were linked to the changes. Crop productivity in the farming systems is poor and nutrient balances differed between farm types. Balances of N, P and K were all positive for larger farms (LF) that had more cattle and derived a larger proportion of their income from off-farm activities, whereas on the medium farms (MF), small farms with cattle (SF1) and without cattle (SF2) balances were mostly negative. Sustainability of the farming system is driven by livestock, crop production, labour and access to off-farm income. Building private public partnerships around market-oriented crops can be an entry point for encouraging investment in use of external nutrient inputs to boost productivity in such African farming systems. However, intervention strategies should recognise the diversity and heterogeneity between farms to ensure efficient use of these external inputs.     

户籍类型与城乡居民医疗服务利用 ——基于Andersen模型的经验分析

本文利用中国社会科学院经济研究所2018年城乡居民入户调查数据,从户籍改革角度分析户口类型改变对城乡居民医疗服务利用的影响。研究发现:与户口类型未发生改变的城乡居民相比,户口类型发生过改变(农转非)的城乡居民门急诊服务利用的可能性更高,住院医疗服务支出水平更低。从户籍改革与参保类型交互效应看,相对于户口类型未发生过改变的居民医保参保人群,户口类型发生改变(农转非)会显著提高居民医保参保人群门急诊服务利用,同时降低其住院服务利用。进一步采用PSM方法进行稳健性检验,户籍改革对提高城乡居民门急诊服务利用,降低住院医疗服务利用的结论依然成立。此外,本文还发现,直接结算提高了城乡居民门急诊和住院的就诊概率;健康自评状况越差,门急诊和住院医疗服务利用可能性越高,门急诊医疗支出、住院医疗支出和跨省异地就医支出也越高。本文认为,相对于推行基层分级诊疗制度,以户籍改革推动农村居民自由流入医疗资源更丰富的城镇地区,改革基层卫生院制度,以及改变基层医疗服务提供激励机制,可能更有助于改善农村居民健康状况。     

Food Poverty,Vulnerability, and Food Consumption Inequality Among Smallholder Households in Ghana: A Gender-Based Perspective

We examined gender-based household welfare differences in Ghana among smallholder households. We measured disparities in welfare outcomes (food poverty, vulnerability, and food consumption inequality) across male and female household heads and identified the set of covariates influencing them. The study utilizes a dataset from a farm household survey undertaken in Northern Ghana from October to December 2018. A multistage sampling approach was adopted in selecting 900 farm households. The Oaxaca–Blinder mean and Recentered Inference Function decomposition techniques highlighted the sources of gender differentials in household welfare outcomes. The findings indicate a significant gap in food consumption expenditure per capita and household dietary diversity scores between male- and female- headed households, and these gaps are as high as 28.2% and 18.1%, respectively. However, there are no statistically significant differences in vulnerability to food poverty between male- and female-headed households. The Lorenz curves confirm inequality in gendered households’ food consumption expenditure and dietary diversity scores. This study highlights the existence of systemic female-headed household vulnerability to food poverty in Ghana. This study provides significant evidence of the need for policymakers to address food systems’ structural deficiencies and inequalities with gender in mind.

     

Family planning and deforestation: evidence from the Ecuadorian Amazon

Despite an abundant literature exploring the relationship between population growth and forest cover change, comparatively little research has examined the forest cover impacts of family planning use—a key determinant of population growth rates in many developing countries. Using data from a panel survey of farms in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, this paper explores whether family planning use affects changes in forest cover. After controlling for household life cycle effects, family planning use among female heads of farm households did not have an independent effect on deforestation, reforestation, or net forest loss between 1990 and 2008. Rather, shorter-term drivers of forest change tend to be associated with household life cycles and shifts in production and consumption. However, family planning will continue to improve development and health outcomes for women by reducing unwanted fertility and may offer longer-term environmental benefits.     

U.S. Family Household Momentum and Dynamics: An Extension and Application of the ProFamy Method

The classic headship-rate method for demographic projections of households is not linked to demographic rates, projects a few household types without size, and does not deal with household members other than heads. By comparison, the ProFamy method uses demographic rates as input and projects more detailed household types, sizes, and living arrangements for all members of the population. Tests of projections from 1990 to 2000 using ProFamy and based on observed U.S. demographic rates before 1991 show that discrepancies between our projections and census observations in 2000 are reasonably small, validating the new method. Using data from national surveys and vital statistics, census microfiles, and the ProFamy method, we prepare projections of U.S. households from 2000 to 2050. Medium projections as well as projections based on smaller and larger family scenarios with corresponding combinations of assumptions of marriage/union formation and dissolution, fertility, mortality, and international migration are performed to analyze future trends of U.S. households and their possible higher and lower bounds, as well as enormous racial differentials. To our knowledge, the household projections reported in this article are the first to have found empirical evidence of family household momentum and to have provided informative low and high bounds of various indices of projected future households and living arrangements distributions based on possible changes in demographic parameters.     

Books and publications received

Efforts to control rampant population growth in sub-Saharan Africa have been stymied by confusion between the potential causes and consequences of high fertility in the region. A controversy has surfaced over the causal direction of the fundamental relationship between human fertility and size of landholdings. Members of one school of thought claim that farm couples modify their fertility behaviour according to the amount of land they own or operate. Yet others argue that the size of landholdings varies as a function of family size (an indicator of the availability of family labour). In the present study we use a two-stage least-squares regression on data from a 1988 survey of 747 farm households in Rwanda to disaggregate and compare the strengths of these two possible paths of influence. The results show that landholdings exert a positive influence on human reproduction, but not the reverse. Moreover, this influence is slightly stronger for couples who own all the land they operated, probably because they have larger incomes from equity in the land. The size of the farm is unrelated to the size of the family's potential farm labour force (measured as the number of household members aged 15–65) or to the husband's total desired number of children. These findings suggest that farm size boosts the number of living children not by creating a demand for more children but by increasing the supply of children through higher natural fertility and child survival.     

Public assistance receipt among immigrants and natives: How the unit of analysis affects research findings

Differences between immigrant and native households in rates of welfare receipt depend on nativity differences in individual-level rates of receipt, in household size, in mean number of recipients in receiving households, and in household nativity composition. We present algebraic derivations of these relationships and use data from the 1990 and 1991 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine empirically the extent to which levels of welfare receipt for immigrants and natives are sensitive to the use of household-, family-, or individual-level units of analysis or presentation. The findings show that nativity differences are statistically significant only at the level of larger units. The results also indicate that if immigrants and natives had identical living arrangements, immigrants' household-level receipt of Supplemental Security Income would significantly exceed natives' receipt even more than it actually does, but the nativity difference in receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) would reverse directions. Moreover, the level of AFDC receipt of immigrant households falls significantly below that of native households when native-born children living in households headed by immigrants are treated as if they were foreign born.     

Population and Upland Crop Production in Nang Rong,Thailand

This paper estimates village-level models of the effects of population variables on the area devoted to upland crop production in Nang Rong district, Thailand. The expansion of upland crops is part of the growth of market agriculture in Nang Rong, and a correlate of deforestation in this setting, The results show that population density (measured as density of village settlement) negatively affects area in upland crops while population growth has a positive effect. Changes in land use associated with population change appear to radiate outward from nuclear village centers. As cash economies are established in rural settings, household formation requires a source of income as well as a subsistence stake. Growth in the population of households is a stronger predictor of the area in upland crops than growth in the number of persons.     

Changes in household formation and composition in China since the mid-twentieth century

China has experienced great changes in household formation and composition since the mid-twentieth century, and its mean size of households has fallen from 54 persons in 1947 to 3.1 in 2005. Many of these changes, especially those taking place in the early years of the People’s Republic, have not been systematically investigated. This paper examines the impact of China’s major political, social, demographic and economic changes on household formation and composition. The study shows that changes in Chinese households have not followed a simple linear trajectory, but shown, considerable fluctuations. A drastic increase in the number of households and a sharp reduction in the mean size of households were recorded after the land reform in the early 1950s. In the next twenty years, high fertility was promoted by a generally pronatalist environment, and the mean size of households increased. Since the early 1970s, the nationwide family planning campaign has led to a rapid fertility decline and great chanes in kinship structure. The recent rise in rural-urban migration has also resulted in many unprecedented changes, and they have become major forces affecting household formation and family life in contemporary China.     

Household and farm transitions in environmental context

Recent debate in the literature on population, environment, and land use questions the applicability of theory that patterns of farm extensification and intensification correspond to the life course of farmers and to the life cycle of farm families. This paper extends the debate to the agricultural development of the United States Great Plains region, using unique data from 1875 to 1930 that link families to farms over time in 25 environmentally diverse Kansas townships. Results of multilevel statistical modeling indicate that farmer’s age, household size, and household structure are simultaneously related to both the extent of farm operations and the intensity of land use, taking into account local environmental conditions and time trends as Kansas was settled and developed. These findings validate farm- and life cycle theories and offer support for intergenerational motivations for farm development that include both daughters and sons. Environmental variation in aridity was a key driver of farm structure.     

Shifts in household demographics herald economic changes for Thailand

In Thailand, dramatic changes in households and the health status of the population have led to important implications for the economic sector. These changes affect health, education, housing, employment and transportation. A new book on the economic impact of demographic change by Andrew Mason and Burnham O. Campbell is referred to as a full discussion of the issues. National planning and projections must include household characteristics as well as numerical projections. The analysis of Mason and Campbell is summarized in this article. Important changes are occurring in the size, rate of growth, and age structure of Thailand's population. Life expectancy has risen to 63 years for men and 68 years for women. Fertility has fallen to 2 children/woman. Population growth was 1.9% in 1990. In 1990, there were only 1 in 3 under the age of 15, and these numbers are expected to shrink to 1 in 4 by the year 2000. 60% of the population is of working age; this is expected to increase to 65% by the year 2000. The 60 years old population is expected to be 7.5% of the total in the year 2000. The average household has 1.6 children. 96% of households live with a relative. The expectation is that household size will continue to decrease and the number of households will continue to grow. The number of elderly heads of households is expected to rise to 11% by 2010. Households will become "adultified." The policy implications for education are that the school age population will gradually decreases but the number enrolled will increase. Primary school enrollment will stabilize and then decline after 1995. Secondary school enrollment will increase and level off in 2005. Total enrollment will increase from 10.5 million in 1990 to 11.4 million in 2000 and decline to 10.7 in 2015. These changes will allow for improvements in the quality of education and expand educational attainment. In health care, the demand for maternal and child health services will decline; changes will occur in the kinds of medical care needed.     

Ethno-Linguistic Affiliation and Income Poverty in Native Households with Children: Finland 1987–2011

The child poverty rate has increased noticeably in Finland since the mid-1990s, and there are numerous studies in this area. However, little is known about child poverty in the two native and equal population groups, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers. Using detailed register-based data that cover the period 1987–2011, we analyze how child poverty depends on parental ethno-linguistic affiliation, and whether there is variation in income poverty across these households over time. The poverty measure is relative and based on equalized taxable household income of households with children. Odds of poverty are estimated with logistic regression models using generalized estimating equations to account for repeated observations at the household level. The analyses are restricted to areas with both Swedish- and Finnish-speaking settlement. Single-parent and two-parent households are analyzed separately. Poverty rates increased in all major types of households during the study period, but variation by ethno-linguistic affiliation was fairly modest. Swedish-speaking single-parent and two-parent households experienced a smaller increase in the poverty rate than Finnish-speaking ones, while patterns observed for exogamous households were less clear. The contribution of control variables on the ethno-linguistic poverty differences was modest. Considering that the ethno-linguistic groups studied are indigenous and equal, the small differences in poverty rates between Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers are evidence of a democratic and well-functioning welfare state, although the increasing overall poverty rates over time require future scrutiny by both policy makers and researchers.