This paper investigates how domestic violence, fertility aspirations, and women’s bargaining power shape marital stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Using pooled DHS data (2007, 2013/2014, and 2023/2024) and a recursive bivariate probit model, the analysis addresses the endogeneity between domestic violence and union dissolution. Results reveal an equilibrium of endurance under constraint: domestic violence sharply increases separation, whereas fertility aspirations and bargaining power exert stabilizing, yet distinct, effects. Women with high fertility ideals are less likely to exit unions, suggesting that reproductive goals act as normative anchors that discourage dissolution even in violent settings. Bargaining power, unexpectedly, protects unions in non-violent contexts but loses its stabilizing force when conflict escalates, a “conditional fragility” in which empowerment cannot counter coercive control. Interactions show that autonomy weakens the binding role of fertility ideals: for women with higher decision-making authority, these aspirations no longer dictate marital continuity. Subsample analyses reveal spatial contrasts. In rural areas, bargaining power and pronatalist norms reinforce “negotiated endurance”, sustaining unions despite adversity, while in urban contexts, empowerment supports “autonomous resilience”: it is associated with lower exposure to violence and greater union instability under violent conditions, reflecting a lower tolerance for harmful relationships but also the possibility of male-initiated dissolution. Findings underscore that public interventions must address both violence and the reproductive and structural constraints that bind women within harmful unions.
Lifespan disparity ( e^†_0 ) varies for similar values of life expectancy ( e_0^ ) owing to changes in the shares of premature and old-age mortality about threshold age on one hand, and in the composition of causes of death on the other. Decomposition analyses of e_0^+ for 24 causes of death using mortality rates from the 2021 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study were used to assess its age-cause-specific contributions in the progression of e^†_0 during 1990–2019. The results reveal that e^†_0 values for men and women declined from 17.7 to 17.4 years in 1990–1994 to 13.2 and 12.9 years, respectively, in 2015-20l9. This decline in e^†_0 was mainly due to four diseases: respiratory infections, enteric infections, neonatal disorders, and other infectious diseases in infants, children, and childbearing age groups. On other hand, the unfavourable roles of cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases in the passive decline in e^†_0 have been attributed to the low threshold age. Hence, the share of premature mortality has not been sufficient for the progressive decline in e^†_0 in India, when compared with HICs/UMICs and LMICs with e_0^ in range of ± 2. Thus, the changes in e^†_0 shaped by a few age groups and selected causes of death would progress differently compared to when contributed by many age groups and causes of death. Our results suggest India should focus on programs and policies averting deaths among older adults caused by CVDs and CRDs, which may shift the threshold age upward for a leap in mortality advancement.
Research on the geographic mobility of journeypersons in Canada is growing, but less is known about the economic gains or losses associated with different forms of mobility. Using a sociology of work lens, we analyze data from the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform (ELMLP) to create a sample of 423,565 journeypersons who achieved Red Seal certification between 2009 and 2020 (aged 18–65). We test whether there is an economic premium for distinct forms of mobility: employment mobility, residential mobility, and their overlap. Descriptively, the results show that movers earn substantially more than stayers. Median incomes for movers exceed those of stayers in every province except Alberta, with the largest mover advantages observed for Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and British Columbia. Multivariate results show that employment mobility yields the highest adjusted earnings, followed by engaging in both employment and residential mobility; in contrast, residential-only mobility is associated with an earnings penalty relative to staying. Taken together, the findings indicate that the Red Seal framework facilitates economic returns primarily when mobility connects workers to jobs across provincial or territorial lines, underscoring the value of policies that lower frictions to interprovincial employment matching.
Family formation patterns in Canada have undergone substantial change over the past century. The diverging destinies and pattern of disadvantage theses suggest that patterns of family formation have increasingly diverged between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged groups. However, patterns of family formation in the Canadian context remain understudied. Canada is an important national context for testing and expanding social demographic theories because of its different context of opportunity relative to the US, which may mitigate the consequences that economic disadvantage has on individuals’ family formation trajectories. Drawing on data from the 2017 Canadian General Social Survey and using multiple sequence analysis, this paper documents changes in typical family formation trajectories for women born in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It then examines how parental education is associated with different family formation trajectories for women from each birth cohort using multinomial logistic regression models. Results show substantial shifts in family formation trajectories across cohorts, including delayed transitions and increased diversity in sequencing. However, changes in socioeconomic stratification are uneven. The influence of parental education is not uniform across pathways; it remains concentrated in specific trajectories, particularly those characterized by early marriage and childbearing or delayed family formation, while weakening or remaining modest in others. These findings provide limited support for a straightforward “diverging destinies” pattern. Instead, they suggest a more complex and context-dependent relationship between socioeconomic background and family formation.
In 1952, the psychiatrist Erwin Stengel hypothesized that suicide becomes rarer in times when the value of life within a society is lower, when death is more common. In Canada, suicide rates and death rates present with consistent seasonality between years, fluctuating inversely with one another. However, the typical pre-pandemic seasonality seen in death rates was broken during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a consequence of inordinate deaths occurring at an odd time of year. This offers a unique opportunity to observe whether suicide rates were inversely disrupted. The present study models weekly Canadian suicide rates using death rates, from time series data spanning 2010 to 2019. Results indicate that suicide rates decrease on average by 0.27 standard deviations per 1 standard deviation increase in the death rate. This model is then used to predict 2020 suicide rates, using 2020 death rates. Predictions account for 11.6% of the variation in actual 2020 suicide rates. Furthermore, actual 2020 suicide rates display a negative disruption at the same time as the 2020 death rate positive disruption, and this suicide rate disruption is mimicked by our model predictions. Overall, results are interpreted as being favorable towards Stengel’s theory. As alternative interpretation, we suggest that each non-suicide-related death removes a potential suicide from the population. Overall analysis suggests that elevated death rates during colder seasons are driven by increased communicable disease transmission relative to warmer seasons, resulting in suppressed suicide rates.
The 21st Century has witnessed a global housing crisis, which is also occurring in the context of population aging. We hypothesized that housing instability may expose older adults to greater risk factors for onset of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a population-based study of older US adults, we analyzed whether changes to older adults’ housing patterns were associated with earlier onset of accelerated cognitive decline consistent with ADRD. We first replicated results showing that renting is becoming more common over time in older adults, while homeownership is becoming less common both in subsequent years and among later-born cohorts. Next, using non-linear multivariate analyses we found, in separate analyses, that renting, moving more frequently, living with non-partner others, and greater housing stress were all associated with earlier onset of accelerated cognitive decline indicative of ADRD. Given the growing population of older adults, this study suggests that the housing crisis may also cause worsened cognitive health in old age. More research is warranted to determine whether other markers of housing affordability or quality might be associated with accelerated cognitive decline in older adults.
This study investigates the influence of grandparental income on postsecondary education (PSE) participation, providing novel evidence on multigenerational social mobility in Canada. Using a multigenerational sample drawn from tax data, we find that grandparental income has a significant direct effect on grandchildren's PSE participation, even after controlling for parental income. We also find evidence of a compensation effect, especially for access to bachelor’s programs: high-income grandparents partially offset the disadvantage of having low-income parents. However, the magnitude of this compensation is modest. In addition, the direct influence of grandparental income is attenuated once we control for additional parental characteristics such as education and occupation. This analysis extends our understanding of social mobility processes in Canada while highlighting how cycles of advantage and disadvantage persist across multiple generations. Our findings suggest that focusing solely on bivariate parent–child transmission instead of multidimensional measures of parental social origins may underestimate the extent of social reproduction and overestimate the degree of social mobility in Canadian society. Finally, we make a methodological contribution by demonstrating how Canadian tax data can be leveraged to study extended family networks despite significant data limitations stemming from the absence of a population register or longitudinal surveys in Canada.
Age homogamy is an established proxy for female empowerment in historical contexts. This study investigates the long-term trajectory of gender relations in Lesotho, a country that today ranks among the highest in Africa for gender equality. We ask: are its characteristically low levels of marital age hypergamy a recent development or a historical feature? Analyzing parish registers from 1880 to 1939 and comparing to contemporary Demographic and Health Surveys (2004–2014), we demonstrate a striking continuity in spousal age gaps and the derived Girlpower-Index over more than a century. After excluding widows, divorcées, and custom marriages to ensure a consistent sample, our analysis of 3,575 historical records reveals distributions and index values nearly identical to those of the 21st century. This finding challenges narratives that attribute contemporary African marriage patterns solely to recent modernization. The persistence of the Girlpower-Index suggests a possible deep-seated pattern of female agency, indicating that the foundations of Lesotho’s modern gender profile may have been established well before the contemporary era. This study underscores the critical importance of historical demographic data for contextualizing contemporary social structures in Africa.
Although the scarcity of accurate and accessible data on international migration flows typically prevents a full understanding of migratory patterns, this might not be the case for Latin America and the Caribbean, where high-quality census data on five-year migrant stocks is publicly available through the project International Migration in Latin America (IMILA). However, such data have mostly been used for research at the regional level because of the fragmented nature of their availability and lack of English documentation. To tackle this issue, we consolidated data from the IMILA collection to provide a harmonized dataset with five-year migrant stocks by country of birth, country of residence at t-5, and sex for 12 Latin American and Caribbean destination countries and two periods (1995–2000 and 2005–2010). We then compare IMILA five-year stocks with five-year stocks with other publicly available figures from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series—International (IPUMS-I) and with pseudo-Bayesian five-year migration flow estimates (Abel, 2022), assessing differences in magnitude, directional patterns, and gender composition. Treating IMILA as a working bronze standard, we evaluate the difference and provide an overview of the Latin American and Caribbean migration system for 1995–2000 and 2005–2010. Our analysis demonstrates that differences across data sources are twofold: they not only affect the measured magnitude and relative weight of origins and destinations but also determine the extent to which it is possible to examine the sociodemographic stratification and inequalities embedded in migration processes—an analytical dimension that census-based data are uniquely equipped to capture.
This paper examines the fertility transition in Peru, focusing on the cohorts of women born between 1936 and 1984 according to their educational level. Using data from the Demographic and Family Health Surveys (1986–2022), the study analyses completed fertility, birth order distribution, and median ages of key reproductive events. The results reveal a close relationship between educational level and fertility patterns, with persistent differences between educational groups. The completed fertility cohort decreased from 5.59 to 3.23 children per woman between the oldest and most recent cohorts, with more pronounced reductions in lower education groups. However, gaps between educational groups persist, aligning with Bongaarts’ “permanent differences” model. A general trend towards smaller family sizes is observed across all educational levels, but with substantial variations. Women with higher education show a pattern of later onset of reproductive life and greater fertility control. Although educational expansion has played a central role in Peru’s fertility transition, it has led to only partial convergence in reproductive patterns. These findings have important implications for public policies, indicating that effective interventions must address not only educational access but also the broader socioeconomic inequalities and cultural factors shaping reproductive decisions. Policies that combine educational expansion with improved reproductive health services, economic opportunities for women, and efforts to transform traditional gender norms would be most effective in addressing persistent fertility differences.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the trends and determinants of high skilled and low skilled Mexican migration to the US from 1970 to 2017. I used retrospective life history data from the Mexican Migration Project to (1) analyze the probability of a first migration from Mexico to the US for high skilled Mexicans relative to their low skilled counterparts, and (2) identify individual and contextual determinants of both migration flows. Results from discrete-time event-history models reveal that the likelihood of US migration for high skilled Mexicans has not followed a linear, upward trend. High skilled migration has historically been smaller than low skilled migration, with two exceptions: during the 1980s and recently since the mid-2010s. At the individual level, human, social, and physical capital are significant predictors of low skilled migration; in contrast, high skilled migration is mainly influenced by social capital. Contextual factors affect each group differently: high skilled migration responds to adverse economic conditions in Mexico and US labor market conditions, whereas low skilled migration is influenced by Mexican homicide rates, US immigration enforcement, and economic conditions in both countries. Overall, findings suggest that, until recently, highly educated workers have generally preferred to stay in Mexico than to emigrate.
The conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have resulted in significant conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) against girls under 18. This study examines the impact of conflict and CRSV on first-order marital and non-marital adolescent fertility in the DRC. We utilized data from the 2007 Demographic and Health Surveys, geo-referenced conflict data (UCDP-GED), and CRSV data (GEO-SVAC). Using the Mundlak approach, we first implemented a binary multilevel discrete-time event history model to assess how exposure to conflict and CRSV impacted the timing of first adolescent conception, both marital and premarital. Second, we treated first marital and premarital conceptions as two competing events. We employed a multinomial multilevel discrete-time event history model to examine the impact of exposure to conflict and CRSV on each type of event. Our findings reveal that (1) exposure to CRSV increased the risk of premarital adolescent conception; (2) conflict exposure reduced the likelihood of marital adolescent conception; (3) CRSV delayed adolescent conception within marriage. The first two findings align with existing literature, while the third offers new insights into how CRSV may delay the timing of first adolescent pregnancy, including through spousal rejection following extramarital sexual violence and resilience among survivors. These results underscore the need for (1) improved access to contraceptives for girls in conflict zones, (2) strengthened women’s empowerment programs, and (3) lasting peace in the DRC to enhance adolescent health outcomes.
Although research on wealth disparities between men and women is expanding, the topic remains understudied in Canada due to the predominant collection of asset and debt data at the household level, which conceals intra-family inequalities. This article helps address this research gap by leveraging five waves of the Survey of Financial Security, conducted between 2005 and 2023, and applying a machine learning approach to estimate individual-level non-pension wealth for Canadian men and women. These estimates are also combined with data on wealth held in employer-sponsored pension plans observed at the individual level. The results reveal that women consistently possess less wealth than men, though the extent of this gap varies across provinces and has narrowed over time, particularly concerning pension wealth. The study further investigates whether Quebec’s adoption of an explicit family policy in the late 1990s, which facilitated women’s participation in the paid labour force, along with its distinctive legal framework for the division of property upon union dissolution, were associated with a reduction of gender wealth disparities in this province. While gender wealth gaps have declined more in Quebec than in several other provinces since 2005, particularly among younger cohorts, similar trends are also observed in other Canadian regions, particularly Ontario. This provides mixed evidence regarding the impact of Quebec’s policies, calling for follow-up studies in the coming years, when the cohorts that have benefited from the family policy measures will have grown older and amassed more wealth. Importantly, the findings underscore the need for improved data collection practices in Canada to better capture intra-family wealth disparities and inform more effective policy interventions.
Emotional spousal violence (ESV) against women in India has shown little change over time despite a steady decline in physical and sexual violence, highlighting the importance of addressing its underlying causes. The current study draws on feminist theory to investigate the association between gender power dynamics and ESV against women. Data come from the couple file of the National Family Health Survey (2019/21), with analysis restricted to 46,488 currently-married women aged 18–49. Gender power dynamics were operationalized as husbands’ controlling behavior, women’s decision-making autonomy, both spouses’ justification of wife-beating, and both spouses’ exposure to childhood household violence, which were tested as predictors of ESV, along with other socioeconomic confounders. 13
The patterning of children’s first names has changed dramatically over the last century. In the early 1900s the given names of children were far more widely shared than is now the case. Boys’ names, especially, were more tightly associated with both biblical figures and paternal lineages. We describe these changing patterns using publicly available time-series data listing the first names assigned to newborns in British Columbia (1924–2024), Ontario (1921–2023), and Canada (1991–2023). Our findings show that, first, the diversity of forenames given to children has expanded. Second, the amount of diversity among girls’ and boys’ first names is now almost identical. We briefly explore, and test where possible, the reasons why these historical changes might have arisen. Changing patterns among given names are associated both with the waning of tradition (e.g., religion) and the rise of individualism (e.g., increasing identity differentiation). We end with a brief note on the increasing use of androgynous names in the last three decades.
Prior research has identified mental health disparities among members of LGBTQ2 + communities across the lifespan. Evidence also suggests that sources of stress and health-seeking behaviour vary by axes of diversity, such as sexuality, gender, and age. We investigated how sexuality and gender relate to mental health, stress, and coping abilities across different stages of the lifespan using cross-sectional data from Canada’s 2022 Mental Health and Access to Care Survey (MHACS). Specifically, this study: (1) examined sexual and gender minority disparities in mental health outcomes of depression, anxiety, and emotional well-being across age groups; (2) investigated sources of stress and how gender and sexual minority individuals perceive and respond to stressors, and whether this differs from non-LGBTQ2 + people; and (3) sought to understand mental health help-seeking behaviour, focusing on how LGBTQ2 + identities influence the likelihood of support-seeking across adulthood. Findings from this study will contribute to the expanding body of research on LGBTQ2 + mental health in Canada and internationally, helping to inform the development of tailored mental health interventions that support the well-being of LGBTQ2 + people of all ages.
Following catastrophic events such as pandemics or wars, a systematic loss in life expectancy at birth ( e_0 ) can be observed. This study aims to estimate the time required for e_0 to recover after mortality crises and to identify which age groups contribute to the decline and assist in restoring pre-crisis levels. Focusing on major European pandemics and wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, we used data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD). Arriaga’s decomposition was applied to analyze e_0 values before the sharpest decline and at the recovery point. Events were categorized into pandemics and non-pandemics, and further stratified by sex. Various statistical tests were used to ensure valid comparisons. The analysis is grounded in demographic resilience, understood as the capacity of a population to return to previous e_0 levels after a mortality shock. This approach enables comparison between events of different types and historical contexts. Our findings show that the largest e_0 declines occurred during the World Wars. No significant differences were found by event type or sex. Youth and children emerged as the main contributors to the decline and recovery of e_0 following catastrophic events.
Did the legalization of abortion really reduce crime rates? Donohue and Levitt (2001) proposed that the legalization of abortion in 1973 led to a dramatic decrease in crime in the United States during the 1990s. The current study tests this theory in the Canadian context, treating the 1988 liberalization of abortion as the exogenous source of abortion variation. Arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reporting Incident-based Survey and abortion rates from the Therapeutic Abortion Survey were used to construct an “effective abortion rate” (EAR) for each year from 1990 to 2020. The EAR sums the product of the ratio of criminal charges for a given cohort and the abortion rate for the year prior to that cohort’s birth (i.e., approximately when the cohort was in utero). Provincial youth violent and property crime rates were then regressed on the constructed EAR term. Despite attempts to align the analysis with Donohue and Levitt’s theory by performing additional regressions on only theoretically-relevant provinces, the link between crime and abortion could not be substantiated.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected mortality through multiple mechanisms, including direct, indirect, and combined direct-indirect effects, as well as competing risks. This study aimed to examine these effects on mortality in the municipality of Campinas, Brazil. The first hypothesis is that mortality from the main causes of death among older adults increased due to difficulties in accessing health care during the pandemic. The second hypothesis is that excess deaths in Campinas can be attributed to the direct-indirect and indirect effects of COVID-19. The analysis was conducted in two stages: the first, an ecological study covering the period from 2010 to 2022; the second, a time-series analysis from 2010 to 2023. Mortality data were obtained from the Ministry of Health of Brazil, and population estimates from Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (2010, 2022). The results indicate an excess in mortality among adults and older adults for selected ICD-10 chapters, as well as evidence of excess deaths not directly attributed to COVID-19. These findings underscore the importance of considering broader dimensions of the pandemic’s impact on mortality, beyond officially recorded COVID-19 deaths.
