This study explores factors that contribute to female labour participation in Lao PDR and argues that ethnicity is the primary determinant of female labour force participation, conditioning how all other socioeconomic and demographic factors operate within the country's diverse population. While existing literature emphasises sociodemographic factors that affect female labour outcomes in developing countries, evidence remains scarce for ethnically diverse contexts such as Lao PDR. Using the 2022 Labour Force Survey and a Probit estimation method applied to 13,519 working-age females above the age of 15, we demonstrate that the effects of access to public utilities, urban residence, and household size on female labour participation are neither uniform nor independent in that they are fundamentally mediated by ethnic identity. Specifically, we show that distinct cultural systems embedded within ethnic groups, such as matrilocal versus patrilocal norms, determine the degree to which education, infrastructure, and geography translate into labour market engagement. Educational attainment, public utility access, and urban residence show positive effects on participation overall, while larger household size exerts negative effects, but the magnitude and direction of these relationships vary significantly between ethnic groups. These results suggest that ethnicity is an organising lens through which female labour market outcomes must be understood.
This paper enriches the literature on the debate regarding the relationship between maternal employment and child malnutrition. Some argue that maternal employment is associated with an increase in child malnutrition, while others contend that it leads to a decrease in child malnutrition. The debate centers on the trade-off between time spent working versus caring for children (substitution effect) and the income gained from employment (income effect). The substitution and income effects have opposite impacts on child malnutrition. The substitution effect may increase child malnutrition, while the income effect may reduce it. This paper contributes new empirical evidence of the association between maternal employment and child malnutrition, measured with stunting and wasting in Indonesia, where child malnutrition remains one of the challenges in development. It addresses potential endogeneity concerns through the use of the IV-2SLS approach and utilizes data from the 2021 'Indonesian Nutrition Status Study' data, a nationally representative survey noteworthy for its anthropometric data. It concludes that maternal employment is related to lower malnutrition indicating that the income effect is greater than the substitution effect. Policymakers can therefore focus on improvements in infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and community education, as they are essential and needed to increase women's income.
In response to a perceived decline in traditional family sizes and below-replacement fertility rates, the provincial government of Bali, Indonesia, has announced a new pro-natalist policy scheduled for implementation in 2025. The policy offers financial incentives for families having their third and fourth children, who are traditionally named Komang and Ketut, respectively. This paper conducts an ex-ante quantitative analysis to evaluate the likely impact of this policy on Bali's Total Fertility Rate. We employ a household utility maximisation framework, calibrated with demographic and economic data from Bali and Indonesia, to simulate the fertility choices of a synthetic population of households before and after the policy's introduction. The results of the policy simulation indicate a minimal potential impact, with the total fertility rate projected to increase by less than 1 per cent under plausible assumptions about the incentive's value. A sensitivity analysis confirms that even under highly optimistic scenarios, the policy is unlikely to induce a substantial rise in fertility. We argue that while the policy might positively address local cultural anxieties regarding the Balinese naming tradition, its design overlooks the complex, multifaceted determinants of modern fertility decisions.
This paper examined the influence of social networks on fertility behaviour across high- and low-fertility states in India. Drawing on the diffusion hypothesis and using data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, 2019-21), the study explored a range of both direct and indirect social network variables. Household structure as a direct indicator reflected the influence of kin-based networks. Indirect indicators, representing social informational exposure, comprised media exposure, exposure to family planning messages, mobility, contact with frontline health workers, and knowledge about microfinance. Generalized poisson and negative binomial regression models were estimated to test the hypotheses for low and high fertility states accordingly. Findings indicated that women from non-nuclear families tended to have lower fertility compared to women from nuclear families. Conversely, all indirect indicators related to social networks showed a strong negative influence on fertility, although the strength of this relationship varied differentially across fertility regimes.
Parental migration is widely associated with parent-child separation, yet evidence on how such separation affects children's well-being and development remains mixed and context-dependent. This study tests the hypothesis that parental absence negatively affects child development, taking into account the child's age and gender, the SRQ score of the primary caregiver, household economic status, and child development activities within the household. Using the Developmental Surveillance and Promotion Manual (DPSM) tool, five domains of development were assessed: gross motor, fine motor, receptive language, expressive language, and personal-social. Data were drawn from a 2021 household survey conducted in Thailand's three southernmost provinces, an area characterized by high migration rates and long-term civil conflict. The sample comprised 321 children aged 0-72 months (178 males and 143 females). Logistic regression models were used to examine factors associated with overall and domain-specific child development. Although findings were inconsistent across developmental domains, a significant association was found between maternal absence and developmental delay in the receptive language domain. This finding suggests that receptive language development may require particular attention in cases of maternal absence.
Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study examines the relationship between parental education and adult offspring height in China across birth cohorts from 1930 to 1999. Adult height increased by 6-7 centimetres over this period. While the positive association between fathers' schooling and adult children's height remained stable across cohorts, the association with mothers' schooling strengthened markedly and exhibited large gender differences. The maternal education-height gradient increased more rapidly for sons than for daughters, particularly after the 1970s, coinciding with economic reforms and rising female labour force participation. By the late twentieth century, mothers' schooling became a stronger predictor of adult offspring height than fathers' schooling, reflecting greater maternal income, autonomy, and influence over child health investments. In contrast to developed countries, where parental education has tended to reduce height disparities, maternal education in China may have widened height inequalities. Sons appear to have benefited disproportionately from maternal education following economic reforms, suggesting intrahousehold gender bias. A decomposition analysis indicates that changes in the parental education-height association, rather than increases in schooling levels, account for a substantial share of the secular height increase. These findings highlight the gendered nature of human capital formation in China.
While studies have revealed the importance of parental influence on youth transition and several channels for this influence, they have often analysed parental support as an individual variable unilaterally impacting youth. Instead, my study applies a relational approach to examine how Chinese youth with international tertiary education who return to China for employment perceive and negotiate parental support during their school-to-work transition. Drawing on qualitative interview data from 93 Chinese returnees, I examine how they negotiate parental career advice, job arrangements, and parents' emotional and financial support in their school-to-work transition and manage intergenerational disagreements about career choices. The findings indicate that parental support for youth transition is a contested, relational process embedded in the socio-economic context of credential inflation, economic recession, and a precarious labour market and characterised by intergenerational ambivalence and complex emotionality. My study reveals the entanglement of youth mobility, transition, and intergenerationality and highlights the intersubjective reflection on and coproduction of youth transition.
Despite the popular belief that the deterioration of youth employment prospects accelerated fertility decline in Japan, women born in the late 1970s and early 1980s who entered the labour market during the worst job market 'ice-age' have slightly more children than older cohorts. After demonstrating this fact, this study discusses the potential reasons for this subtle fertility recovery. I consider two potential mechanisms. First, the lower potential earnings of women increase fertility through lowering the opportunity cost of parenthood. Second, the simultaneous improvement in public support and work environment has enabled more women to continue working after childbirth. Women who had a regular job before childbearing benefit more from these changes. I show that the subtle increase in fertility was driven by college-educated women, providing suggestive evidence for the second explanation.
Around half of Chinese children with disabilities study in regular schools, as encouraged by national inclusive education policies. Evidence remains limited regarding whether students with disabilities experience health disadvantages compared to their peers. We analysed a sample of 11,037 middle-school students from a nationally representative survey in China. To improve the comparability in student characteristics and contexts, we take advantage of a unique quasi-experimental setting for within-class comparisons, in which the students were randomly assigned to each class. This study is among the first to document substantial health disparities between students with disabilities and their classmates, i.e. lower self-rated health scores and higher depression scores, despite a similar probability of hospitalisation experiences in the past year. The patterns persist between grades and genders. Evidence also suggests protective moderation effects of female class-teachers on the health of girls with disabilities. These findings call for attention to the importance of aligning healthcare and education policies to reduce child population health disparities and promote inclusive development.
Superdiversity is a concept coined and developed in Western contexts to capture the emergent demographic complexity in westward mobility. However, it remains un(der)-analysed in migration in new and emerging geographies. The intent of this paper is not simply to outline the multidimensional nature of superdiversity in China, it also seeks to capture the dynamic interplay of local populations and migrants in a superdiverse context. Taking an ethnographic approach in the international trade city of Yiwu, China, I examine how trade migrants, local residents, educational institutions and government bodies coexist in a market-driven symbiosis - politically, economically, linguistically and socially. Drawing upon Fei Xiaotong's indigenous sociological theory, I offer insights into the practices of a superdiverse trade community in a non-traditional migration destination outside the West and I also add complexity to the idea of 'diversity' itself by showing how it emerges through the interactions between trade migrants and local communities.
This paper examines the factors influencing labour supply and retirement choices among older adults in Thailand, drawing on data from the 2021 Survey of Older Persons. Two specific outcomes are analysed: labour participation and hours worked. The results indicate that various socioeconomic statuses and pension schemes have a significant impact on the labour supply of older adults. Regardless of economic conditions, maintaining good health notably contributes to a substantial increase in labour supply. With over 40 per cent of older adults in the workforce, estimates show that support from adult children and receiving public pensions, excluding Social Security, significantly reduce labour force participation and hours worked. Additionally, individuals with low education in rural areas and limited wealth or debt burdens tend to remain active in the labour market and work longer hours. It also indicates that older adults in skipped-generation families, or those with children under 18, are more likely to work beyond the age of 60. Further analyses reveal disparities in labour supply between urban and rural areas and income groups.
Although living alone and widowhood are recognised risk factors for loneliness among older adults, their long-term effects in the South Korean context remain underexplored. This paper examines the dynamic relationship between living alone, widowhood, and loneliness among older adults (aged 65 and older) in South Korea. Using longitudinal data from eight waves (2006-2020) of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), we employ an adaptation-to-life-events methodology to assess how these two life stressors affect loneliness over time. Older South Korean females are four times more likely to live alone and six times more likely to be widowed than males. Estimation results show that both transitions significantly increase loneliness. Adaptation to living alone is relatively rapid, while adaptation to widowhood is slower. Women experience a spike in loneliness during the first two years of widowhood, followed by partial recovery. In contrast, widowed men experience a sharp increase in loneliness that intensifies over time. We also find that the nexus between living alone and loneliness has gradually weakened from 2006 to 2020, suggesting changing social norms or support structures. Findings highlight the need for gender-responsive policies and targeted support programmes to effectively mitigate loneliness during key life transitions in later life.
In the modern knowledge economy, talents are widely recognized as a critical driver of regional economic development. This study examines the two-stage migration of Chinese university graduates - from home region to university and then to the labour market - based on first-hand survey data. The findings reveal that graduates who previously migrated for higher education are more inclined to migrate again for employment. Furthermore, university quality emerges as a key factor shaping mobility patterns, positioning universities either as magnets or as dispersers of talent. Specifically, at the education-migration stage, higher-quality universities significantly increase the likelihood of students migrating out of their home provinces to pursue higher education. At the employment-migration stage, graduates from top-ranking universities exhibit higher mobility when entering the labour market. These results underscore the role of universities as pivotal nodes in the national talent mobility system and highlight the heterogeneity among universities in their capacity to attract and retain human capital based on their quality.
Fertility change varies spatially in China, however, the trend and factors that influence the variation at the county level are not fully understood. We analysed the spatial variation in fertility change at the county level in China between 2000 and 2010 using spatial Durbin models. We focused on understanding whether and how changes in population composition, local context, and migration influence changing fertility levels across counties. The results show that fertility change varied in different regions from 2000 to 2010, supporting the idea that the stages of fertility transition are spatially different. An increase in females' educational level and a decrease in the share of the married population in a given county and its neighbouring counties are associated with fertility decline. The results highlight that the determinants of the second demographic transition (e.g. education, marital status, gender equality) are more appropriate than economic development and urbanisation to explain spatial variation in fertility change in China from 2000 to 2010. There are significant spillover effects, i.e. changes in neighbouring areas also influence fertility changes in a given region.
This study investigates deliberate fertility control as a risk management strategy in traditional agricultural societies, focusing on Late Qing China. Using disaster records and the China Multi-Generational Panel Dataset-Liaoning (CMGPD-LN), it demonstrates that fertility adjustments-such as delayed marriage and reduced childbearing-alleviate economic hardship. These strategies are particularly effective in low-population pressure regions like Liaoning, where families face both demographic and environmental uncertainties. The findings emphasize that fertility control is not merely a demographic consequence but also a purposeful household strategy to mitigate risk. This research contributes new empirical evidence to the understanding of population regulation in traditional societies, showing that families naturally develop mechanisms of fertility regulation and highlighting the trade-off between offspring quantity and offspring quality.
This study uses data from Nepal's 2021 census to investigate migration variations between mountain regions populated by people who share religious (mainly Buddhism) and cultural affiliations with Tibetans and middle hill regions inhabited by people who represent several ethnic groups and are predominantly Hindu. The purpose is to illuminate differing migration patterns between mountain and hill regions and, just as importantly, between mountain communities that are often lumped together because of presumed cultural and environmental similarities. The hill regions exhibit a labour migration pattern dominated by males seeking income abroad, mainly in the Middle East and wealthier Asian nations. In contrast, migration from the mountain regions is more gender balanced with a higher proportion of people seeking opportunities in Europe and North America. The final section presents perspectives from local researchers on how out-migration is impacting marriage, social cohesion, care for the elderly, and other dimensions of their communities.
This systematic literature review investigates the nexus between women's education and fertility in mainland China. It seeks to contribute to the global knowledge base about gender, education and fertility by mapping the knowledge production from the Chinese society. This study systematically reviewed 23 eligible articles that were published in peer-reviewed English-language journals between 2000 and 2023. These empirical studies examined the relationship between women's education and fertility in mainland China. This review unravels the impacts of various social, cultural, economic, political and policy factors, such as traditional gender roles and household registration system (hukou) that shape the relationship between women's educational attainment and fertility. Five overarching themes emerged: urban-rural disparity and migrants' fertility intention; impact of demographic status and intergenerational support; traditional perceptions of fertility and gender; career prospect and work-life balance; couple dynamics and women's empowerment. Relevant Chinese-language articles were incorporated to complement the findings from English-language studies, providing a more comprehensive picture of Chinese scholarly perspectives and contributing to the global body of knowledge. The implications for addressing demographic changes and directions for future studies are discussed.
We analysed the 2016 Demographic and Health Survey to investigate the effect of low birth weight (LBW) and socioeconomic inequalities in child undernutrition outcomes in Sri Lanka. Anthropometric data from 7,259 children aged 6-59 months were examined, using underweight, stunting, and wasting as outcomes and LBW as the primary predictor. We applied three-level random intercept logistic regression and estimated socioeconomic inequality measures. Our sample included 16.9% LBW children, with 20.7% underweight, 18.2% stunted, and 14.5% wasted. LBW children had significantly increased odds of being stunted [AOR (95% CI) = 3.00 (2.39, 3.78)], wasting [AOR (95% CI) = 2.23 (1.78, 2.74)] and underweight [AOR (95% CI) = 2.95 (2.45, 3.52)]. LBW children in poor households, born to Indian Tamil mothers, faced greater stunting risks [AOR (95% CI) = 1.74 (1.11, 2.72)]. Significant heterogeneity was observed between households within communities. LBW significantly increases undernutrition among children under five, underscoring the need for targeted, multi-sectoral interventions to address child malnutrition in Sri Lanka.
