Living with parents and educational outcomes in developing countries: empirical evidence from PISA Thailand

Family is a fundamental determinant of children’s welfare outcomes, not only in terms of good or bad behaviour, but also in terms of child development, comprising emotional, social, and cognitive skills. Family structure is even more important in a developing country in which educational achievement tends to lag. Using a national sampling from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted in 2009 and 2012 in Thailand as a case study for a developing country, this paper quantifies impacts the effects of family structure on cognitive skills and learning performance among Thai students. The findings reveal that family structure, especially for those living with both father and mother, can positively affect the academic achievement of Thai students compared to those who do not live with both parents. Thus, strengthening family structures should be another necessary policy to could promote positive educational outcomes in this developing country.     

Rethinking the effectiveness of family planning in Africa

For the past 50 years there has been a near global consensus that the demands of development necessitate that couples reduce their fertility as a critical act which would jump start economic growth. This consensus heralded the era of the One Child policy and over 90% of least developed states continue to run programs which seek to induce lower fertility rates in their populations. However, a growing body of literature is questioning both the validity and utility of these interventions. This article seeks to contribute to the rethinking of family planning programs. Using new data on family planning scores from forty two African states this article shows that rates of fertility are unlikely to be affected by the strength of family planning programs at lower levels of development. However, at moderate levels of development, family planning programs may contribute to accelerating the decline in fertility initiated by exogenous factors. These findings offer a fresh perspective on the wide spread adoption of family planning policy that permeates the developing world.     

Influence of Proximity to Kin on Residential Mobility and Destination Choice: Examining Local Movers in Metropolitan Areas

A growing body of research has examined how family dynamics shape residential mobility, highlighting the social—as opposed to economic—drivers of mobility. However, few studies have examined kin ties as both push and pull factors in mobility processes or revealed how the influence of kin ties on mobility varies across sociodemographic groups. Using data on local residential moves from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from 1980 to 2013, we find that location of noncoresident kin influences the likelihood of moving out of the current neighborhood and the selection of a new destination neighborhood. Analyses of out-mobility reveal that parents and young adult children living near each other as well as low-income adult children living near parents are especially deterred from moving. Discrete-choice models of neighborhood selection indicate that movers are particularly drawn to neighborhoods close to aging parents, white and higher-income households tend to move close to parents and children, and lower-income households tend to move close to extended family. Our results highlight the social and economic trade-offs that households face when making residential mobility decisions, which have important implications for broader patterns of inequality in residential attainment.     

Paternal Incarceration and Adolescent Social Network Disadvantage

Previous research has suggested that adolescent peers influence behavior and provide social support during a critical developmental period, but few studies have addressed the antecedents of adolescent social networks. Research on the collateral consequences of incarceration has explored the implications of parental incarceration for children’s behavioral problems, academic achievement, health, and housing stability, but not their social networks. Using network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I find that adolescents with recently incarcerated fathers are in socially marginal positions in their schools and befriend more-marginal peers than other adolescents: their friends are less advantaged, less academically successful, and more delinquent than other adolescents’ friends. Differences in network outcomes are robust to a variety of specifications and are consistent across race and gender subgroups. This study advances the social networks literature by exploring how familial characteristics can shape adolescent social networks and contributes to the collateral consequences of incarceration literature by using network analysis to consider how mass incarceration may promote intergenerational social marginalization.     

Fertility and Life Satisfaction in Rural Ethiopia

Despite recent strong interest in the link between fertility and subjective well-being, the focus has centered on developed countries. For poorer countries, in contrast, the relationship remains rather elusive. Using a well-established panel survey—the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey (ERHS)—we investigate the empirical relationship between fertility and life satisfaction in rural Ethiopia, the largest landlocked country in Africa. Consistent with the fertility theories for developing countries and with the sociodemographic characteristics of rural Ethiopia, we hypothesize that this relationship varies by gender and across life stages, being more positive for men and for parents in old age. Indeed, our results suggest that older men benefit the most in terms of life satisfaction from having a large number of children, while the recent birth of a child is detrimental for the subjective well-being of women at reproductive ages. We address endogeneity issues by using lagged life satisfaction in ordinary least squares regressions, through fixed-effects estimation and the use of instrumental variables.     

The Network Survival Method for Estimating Adult Mortality: Evidence From a Survey Experiment in Rwanda

Adult death rates are a critical indicator of population health and well-being. Wealthy countries have high-quality vital registration systems, but poor countries lack this infrastructure and must rely on estimates that are often problematic. In this article, we introduce the network survival method, a new approach for estimating adult death rates. We derive the precise conditions under which it produces consistent and unbiased estimates. Further, we develop an analytical framework for sensitivity analysis. To assess the performance of the network survival method in a realistic setting, we conducted a nationally representative survey experiment in Rwanda (n = 4,669). Network survival estimates were similar to estimates from other methods, even though the network survival estimates were made with substantially smaller samples and are based entirely on data from Rwanda, with no need for model life tables or pooling of data from other countries. Our analytic results demonstrate that the network survival method has attractive properties, and our empirical results show that this method can be used in countries where reliable estimates of adult death rates are sorely needed.     

The Astonishing Population Averted by China’s Birth Restrictions: Estimates,Nightmares, and Reprogrammed Ambitions

China launched an unprecedented program to control its population in 1971. Experts have dismissed the official estimate of 400 million births averted by this program as greatly exaggerated yet neglect to provide their own estimates. Counterfactual projections based on fertility declines in other countries suggest that China’s program-averted population numbered 360–520 million as of 2015. The low end of this range is based on Vietnam—China’s best national comparator, with a two-child program of its own—and the high end is based on a 16-country comparator selected, ironically, by critics of the official estimate. The latter comparator further implies that China’s one-child program itself averted a population of 400 million by 2015, three-quarters of the total averted population. All such estimates are projected to double by 2060, due mostly to counterfactual population momentum. These and other findings presented herein affirm the astonishing impact of China’s draconian policy choices and challenge the current consensus that rapid socioeconomic progress drove China’s fertility well below two children per family. International comparisons of fertility and income suggest instead that China’s very low fertility arrived two or three decades too soon. If China had not harshly enforced a norm of 1.5-children during the last quarter century, most mothers would have had two children, one-half birth higher than observed.     

Just Like in Their Home Country? A Multinational Perspective on Living Arrangements of Older Immigrants in the United States

Older immigrants are more likely to share residence with their adult children and other family members than are U.S.-born older adults. Because socioeconomic factors only partially explain these differences and direct measures of cultural preferences are seldom available, the persistently high rates of intergenerational coresidence among the older foreign-born are often interpreted as driven by cultural preferences and/or a lack of assimilation. To challenge this interpretation, this study investigates the extent to which older immigrants’ living arrangements deviate from those of older adults in their home countries. The analysis combines data on immigrants from the 2008–2012 American Community Survey (ACS) with census data from three major immigrant-sending countries: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Vietnam. Despite persistent differences from U.S.-born whites, coresidence in later life is significantly less common than in the sending countries among the older foreign-born who migrated as young adults, and especially among those who migrated as children. The older foreign-born who migrated after age 50, however, are more likely to coreside and less likely to live independently than the older adults in their home countries. The similarity of these patterns across the three immigrant subgroups suggests that the unusually high coresidence among late-life immigrants is driven by U.S. family reunification policy and not simply by cultural influences.     

Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China

Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.     

Children and Careers: How Family Size Affects Parents’ Labor Market Outcomes in the Long Run

We estimate the effect of family size on various measures of labor market outcomes over the whole career until retirement, using instrumental variables estimation in data from Norwegian administrative registers. Parents’ number of children is instrumented with the sex mix of their first two children. We find that having additional children causes sizable reductions in labor supply for women, which fade as children mature and even turn positive for women without a college degree. Among women with a college degree, there is evidence of persistent and even increasing career penalties of family size. Having additional children reduces these women’s probability of being employed by higher-paying firms, their earnings rank within the employing firm, and their probability of being the top earner at the workplace. Some of the career effects persist long after labor supply is restored. We find no effect of family size on any of men’s labor market outcomes in either the short or long run.