Birth Intervals and Health in Adulthood: A Comparison of Siblings Using Swedish Register Data

A growing body of research has examined whether birth intervals influence perinatal outcomes and child health as well as long-term educational and socioeconomic outcomes. To date, however, very little research has examined whether birth spacing influences long-term health. We use contemporary Swedish population register data to examine the relationship between birth-to-birth intervals and a variety of health outcomes in adulthood: for men, height, physical fitness, and the probability of falling into different body mass index categories; and for men and women, mortality. In models that do not adjust carefully for family background, we find that short and long birth intervals are clearly associated with height, physical fitness, being overweight or obese, and mortality. However, after carefully adjusting for family background using a within-family sibling comparison design, we find that birth spacing is generally not associated with long-term health, although we find that men born after very long birth intervals have a higher probability of being overweight or obese in early adulthood. Overall, we conclude that birth intervals have little independent effect on long-term health outcomes.     

Gendering fertility: Second births in Sweden and Hungary

With the growing prevalence of the dual-earner family model in industrialized countries the gendered nature of the relationship between employment and parenting has become a key issue for childbearing decisions and behavior. In such a context taking into account the societal gender structure (public policies, family-level gender relations) explicitly can enhance our understanding of contemporary fertility trends. In this paper we study the second birth, given its increasing importance in the developed world as large proportions of women remain childless or bear only one child. We focus on Sweden where gender equality is pronounced at both the societal and the family level and on Hungary where the dual-earner model has been accompanied by traditional gender relations in the home sphere. Our analysis is based on data extracted from the Swedish and Hungarian Fertility and Family Surveys of 1992/93. We use the method of hazard regression. The results suggest that the second-birth intensity increases as the combination of parenthood and labor-force attachment of either parent is facilitated. We see this in the effect of family policies in Sweden and in the higher second-birth intensity of couples who share family responsibilities as compared to those with traditional gender-role behavior in both countries. Also, the lack of any visible impact of men's educational attainment in both Sweden and Hungary is probably linked to public policies as state support for families with children has reduced the importance of income for second childbearing. A positive educational gradient for Swedish women and an essentially zero gradient in Hungary reflects the success of policy measures in reducing fertility cost for more educated women in both countries.     

The skills and autonomy of female part-time work in Britain and Sweden

Most OECD countries have experienced an increase of female part-time employment in the last decades. It has been argued that part-time work may give greater employment flexibility, enabling mothers to reconcile conflicting demands of family and work and thereby facilitating their integration into the wage economy. At the same time, it has been suggested that female part-time work implies segmentation of the labour force into a core and a periphery, with marginalized, low qualified jobs for part-time employees. However, little attention has been given to the possible mediating effect of the institutional context on potential job quality disadvantages of part-timers. We examine this question by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time workers in two countries, Britain and Sweden, often considered as representing quite distinct forms of institutional regime. The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equivalents in Britain. Even so, both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantage when compared to female full-time workers. We conclude that differences in the institutional systems of Sweden and Britain do have a significant effect on the absolute skill level of part-time work. However, the relative disadvantage of part-timers persists despite Swedish policies giving greater salience to improvements in the quality of work.     

The long run consequences of unilateral divorce laws on children—evidence from SHARELIFE

Previous research has shown adverse effects of growing up under unilateral divorce laws on long-term outcomes of children. It remains an open question of whether these effects of early childhood conditions arise due to divorce laws raising the likelihood of parental marital disruption or whether unilateral divorce laws also affect children in intact marriages by changing intra-household bargaining. Using recently available data from SHARELIFE for 11 Western European countries, we address this question employing a difference-in-differences approach and controlling for childhood family structure and socioeconomic status. Like previous research, we find adverse effects of growing up under unilateral divorce laws on the well-being of children. This effect remains even when controlling for childhood variables. We conclude that unilateral divorce laws affect children by changing family bargaining in intact marriages.     

Childhood family structure and schooling outcomes: evidence for Germany

We analyze the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a non-intact family in Germany. We find that this experience is associated with worse outcomes according to estimates from models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and educational performance. Evidence of adverse effects emerges also when endogeneity is accounted for. In such cases, however, the point estimates are typically smaller, and their confidence intervals are large enough to include zero, particularly for individuals who grew up in Western Germany.     

Age patterns of mortality and cause-of-death structures in Sweden,Japan, and the United States

This paper uses a new standard model of adult mortality to compare the mortality patterns of Swedes, Japanese, and U.S. whites between 1950 and 1985. It examines changes in the age patterns of mortality and the cause-of-death structures within the populations. and the relationships between those two factors. As Japan has reached a level of mortality similar to that in Sweden, the age patterns of mortality in the two populations have become more similar despite distinct differences in causes of death. The United States has a cause-of-death structure similar to that of Sweden, but the age pattern of mortality is very different. High mortality in the middle age range in the United States results in approximately a one-year loss of life expectancy at age 45 in comparison with Sweden.     

Sweden faces zero population growth

In this discussion of Sweden as it approaches zero population growth, focus is on the following: population growth in perspective, fertility trends (childbearing concentrated and cohort versus period fertility), marital status (non-marital cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, and divorce), women's changing status (increasing education and increasing employment), constraints and supports for women's dual role (family allowances and housing), birth control (contraceptive methods and practice and abortion), mortality trends, changing age structure and the elderly (average population age and proportion of elderly and cost of elderly support), international migration (from emigration to immigration and demographic impact of immigration), immigration policy, recent population debate (immigration issues and facing zero population growth). Since 1900 the primary features of Sweden's demographic history are a continuing decline in the birth rate to very low levels -- relieved by some upward movement in the 1940s and 1960s -- and a marked shift in the migration balance from emigration to immigration. It is almost entirely because of immigration that Sweden's population growth rate has not yet turned negative. If Swedish women were to continue to bear children at the rate that all women in the reproductive ages actually did in 1978, each women would end up with an average well below the level necessary to exactly replace each adult in the population leaving migration out, an annual total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman would have to be sustained for births and deaths to be in balance under the low mortality conditions prevaling in Sweden.     

The Effects of Childhood SNAP Use and Neighborhood Conditions on Adult Body Mass Index

The disproportionate number of individuals who are obese or overweight in the low-income U.S. population has raised interest in the influence of neighborhood conditions and public assistance programs on weight and health. Generally, neighborhood effects and program participation effects have been explored in separate studies. We unite these two areas of inquiry, using the 1968-2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine the long-term effects of childhood Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation, neighborhood conditions, and the interaction of these two, on adult body mass index (BMI). Using sibling fixed-effects models to account for selection bias, we find that relative to children in other low-income families, children in SNAP-recipient households have higher average adult BMI values. However, the effects of childhood SNAP usage are sensitive to both residential neighborhood and age at receipt. For those growing up in advantaged neighborhoods, projected adult BMI is higher for children in SNAP-recipient households than for children in low-income, nonrecipient households. In contrast, for those growing up in less-advantaged areas, adult BMI differences between children in SNAP-recipient and those in low-income, nonrecipient households are small. SNAP usage during preschool years (0 to 4) has no impact on adult BMI scores. However, at later childhood ages, the time elapsed receiving SNAP income increases adult BMI values relative to a condition of low-income nonreceipt.     

High-risk families: the unequal distribution of infant mortality in nineteenth-century Sweden

An analysis of infant mortality (based on 133,448 births) in two regions, Sundsvall and Skellefte?, in north-eastern Sweden during the nineteenth century shows that infant mortality was highly clustered with a relatively small number of families accounting for a large proportion of all infant deaths. Using logistic regression, two important factors were found to be associated with high-risk families: (i) a biological component evidenced by an over-representation of women who had experienced stillbirths, and (ii) a social component indicated by an increased risk among women who had remarried. The results strengthen the argument for using the family rather than the single child as the unit of analysis. The clustering of infant deaths points to the need to re-evaluate our interpretations of the causes of infant mortality in the past.     

The ecology of race and socioeconomic distress: infant and working-age mortality in Chicago

We examine the effects of education, unemployment, and racial segregation on age-, sex-, and race-specific mortality rates in racially defined Chicago community areas from 1989 to 1991. Community socioeconomic factors account for large observed areal variations in infant and working-age mortality, but especially working-age mortality for the black population. For black men, the mortality consequences of living in economically distressed communities are quite severe. Segregation effects on mortality are more modest and largely operate through neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, although some direct effects of segregation on mortality for blacks are apparent.     

Rectangularization revisited: Variability of age at death within human populations*

Rectangularization of human survival curves is associated with decreasing variability in the distribution of ages at death. This variability, as measured by the interquartile range of life table ages at death, has decreased from about 65 years to 15 years since 1751 in Sweden. Most of this decline occurred between the 1870s and the 1950s. Since then, variability in age at death has been nearly constant in Sweden, Japan, and the United States, defying predictions of a continuing rectangularization. The United States is characterized by a relatively high degree of variability, compared with both Sweden and Japan. We suggest that the historical compression of mortality may have had significant psychological and behavioral impacts.     

Sex differences in morbidity and mortality

Women have worse self-rated health and more hospitalization episodes than men from early adolescence to late middle age, but are less likely to die at each age. We use 14 years of data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey to examine this paradox. Our results indicate that the difference in self-assessed health between women and men can be entirely explained by differences in the distribution of the chronic conditions they face. This is not true, however, for hospital episodes and mortality. Men with several smoking-related conditions--including cardiovascular disease and certain lung disorders--are more likely to experience hospital episodes and to die than women who suffer from the same chronic conditions, implying that men may experience more-severe forms of these conditions. While some of the difference in mortality can be explained by differences in the distribution of chronic conditions, an equally large share can be attributed to the larger adverse effects of these conditions on male mortality. The greater effects of smoking-related conditions on men's health may be due to their higher rates of smoking throughout their lives.     

Education of adult children and mortality of their elderly parents in Taiwan

In societies in which families are highly integrated, the education of family members may be linked to survival. Such may be the case in Taiwan, where there are large gaps in levels of education across generations and high levels of resource transfers between family members. This study employs 14 years of longitudinal data from Taiwan to examine the combined effects of the education of older adults and their adult children on the mortality outcomes of older adults. We use nested Gompertz hazard models to evaluate the importance of the education of an older adult and his or her highest-educated child after controlling for socioeconomic, demographic, and health characteristics at baseline. To gain further insight, we fit additional models based on the sample stratified by whether older adults report serious diseases at baseline. The results indicate that the educational levels of both older adults and children are associated with older adult mortality, but children's education appears more important when we examine the mortality of only those older adults who already report a serious disease. This finding suggests that there may be different roles for education in the onset versus the progression of a health problem that may lead to death.     

The Changing Impact of Family Size on Adolescents’ Schooling: Assessing the Exogenous Variation in Fertility Using Twins in Brazil

Researchers have long been interested in the influence of family size on children??s educational outcomes. Simply put, theories have suggested that resources are diluted within families that have more children. Although the empirical literature on developed countries has generally confirmed the theoretical prediction that family size is negatively related to children??s education, studies focusing on developing societies have reported heterogeneity in this association. Recent studies addressing the endogeneity between family size and children??s education have also cast doubt on the homogeneity of the negative role of family size on children??s education. The goal of this study is to examine the causal effect of family size on children??s education in Brazil over a 30-year period marked by important social and demographic change, and across extremely different regions within the country. We implement a twin birth instrumental variable approach to the nationally representative 1977?C2009 PNAD data. Our results suggest an effect of family size on education that is not uniform throughout a period of significant social, economic, and demographic change. Rather, the causal effect of family size on adolescents?? schooling resembles a gradient that ranges from positive to no effect, trending to negative.     

Work-Family Conflict and Working Conditions in Western Europe

This article explores the influence of working conditions on work-family conflict (WFC) among married/cohabiting employees across seven European countries. Using data from the European Social Survey, the paper first investigates the role of working conditions relative to household level characteristics in mediating work-family conflict at the individual level. It then considers whether perceived conflict is lower in countries with coordinated production regimes and where social policy is more supportive of combining paid work and care demands. For men the lowest rates of WFC occurred in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, so for men there was a distinct ‘Nordic’ effect consistent with the welfare and production regime expectations. For women, we find paradoxically that ‘raw’ levels of work-family conflict are particularly high in France, Denmark and Sweden where supports for reconciling work and family life are high. Our models show that the high conflict among French women can be explained by household composition factors and so is due to higher levels of family pressures. Higher levels of conflict among Danish and Swedish women appear to be associated with their longer hours of work. Work conditions are found to play a larger role than family characteristics in accounting for work-family conflict, both in the country level models and in the pooled models. While this partly reflects our focus on the spillover of work into family life, it is notable that family characteristics have little effect in mediating work pressures. The results suggest that a policy emphasis on improving work conditions is likely to have major leverage in reducing work-family conflict.

The Role of Family and Friends in Return Migration and Its Labor Market Outcomes

Population Research and Policy Review - Drawing on survey data on individuals’ motives for migration in Sweden (N?=?2172), we examine the importance of family and friends for...     

Males’ Later-Life Mortality Consequences of Coresidence With Paternal Grandparents: Evidence From Northeast China, 1789–1909

In this study, we investigate the effect of early-life coresidence with paternal grandparents on male mortality risks in adulthood and older age in northeast China from 1789 to 1909. Despite growing interest in the influence of grandparents on child outcomes, few studies have examined the effect of coresidence with grandparents in early life on mortality in later life. We find that coresidence with paternal grandmothers in childhood is associated with higher mortality risks for males in adulthood. This may reflect the long-term effects of conflicts between mothers and their mothers-in-law. These results suggest that in extended families, patterns of coresidence in childhood may have long-term consequences for mortality, above and beyond the effects of common environmental and genetic factors, even when effects on childhood mortality are not readily apparent.     

The effect of inbreeding on early childhood mortality: Twelve generations of an amish settlement

An unresolved issue in research on child survival is the extent to which familial mortality risk in infancy is due to biological influences net of sociodemographic and economic factors. We examine the effect of consanguinity on early childhood mortality in an Old Order Amish settlement by using the inbreeding coefficient, an explicit measure of the degree of relatedness in one's ancestry. Inbreeding has a net positive effect on neonatal and postneonatal deaths. We find social, demographic, and population-based sociocultural explanations for this effect among the Amish population which is known to experience certain genetically transmitted defects associated with mortality.     

The Structure of Subjective Well-Being and Its Determinants: A Micro-Data Study for Portugal

The Subjective Well-Being status has gained a growing research attention in social sciences during the last decades. The attention given by the academic world to this issue has been followed by the community in general. This line of research is still undeveloped in Portugal, and therefore needs further investigation. The purpose of this study is to analyze the determinants of Life Satisfaction and Happiness, two dimensions of Subjective Well-Being of the Portuguese citizens using micro-data from the European Quality of Life Survey. Ordinary Least Squares regressions and Ordinal Logistic models are estimated to identify the main factors that explain well-being in Portugal. We find that trust in public institutions, satisfaction with material conditions, volunteering activities and employment status have a positive and significant effect on Life Satisfaction. Our evidence also shows that satisfaction with family, satisfaction with material conditions, participation in sport activities, optimism and the marital status are relevant factors in explaining citizen’s Happiness in Portugal. The results are similar using Ordinary Least Squares or Maximum Likelihood estimation techniques on ordinal logistic models.