Abstract Migration features regularly in young adult life course transitions in many low‐ and middle‐income countries. The aspirations–capabilities framework points to the importance of life goals and enabling resources for forming expectations of future moves. For some young people, moving away represents an opportunity to reach their aspirations. Others hold aspirations that are more easily fulfilled in the local setting. To understand how migration is connected to prior experiences and aspirations in adolescence, we focus on the formation of migration expectations, disaggregating expectations to include labor migration, education migration, and the expectation to avoid migration altogether. Relying on longitudinal data from adolescents in three diverse settings, Jalisco, Mexico ( n = 1593), Gaza Province, Mozambique ( n = 1350), and Chitwan, Nepal ( n = 1884), the analyses consider the mechanisms through which contemporary young cohorts form expectations for these different migration pathways. The results show that aspirations motivate distinct migration pathways with strikingly consistent patterns across settings. Educational aspirations are associated with subsequent expectations to migrate for further education, portending diversification of migration flows from low‐ and middle‐income settings where labor migration has predominated but access to formal education is expanding and youth engagement in education is growing.
Abstract Mexican migration to the United States has undergone dramatic changes since reaching its peak two decades ago when it was considered the largest sustained population flow in the world. Previous research has documented a sharp decline in Mexico–U.S. migration in the late 2000s, but less is known about later trends. Studies also suggest that return migration to Mexico may have risen following an increase in removals from the United States. This study provides an update on the bidirectional flow of migrants between the two countries disaggregated by demographic subgroups using data from a quarterly employment survey in Mexico. Following the dramatic decline in the late 2000s, Mexican migration to the United States remained low for over a decade with only a modest increase in recent years. The rate of return migration to Mexico also declined sharply until the mid‐2010s and has remained low. Because return migration declined for longer than emigration, net emigration from Mexico has increased since 2010. The observed changes in Mexican migration in recent years are inconsistent with explanations that attribute the earlier decline to lower demand for immigrant labor in the United States and to the direct compositional effects of population aging in Mexico.
Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic opened a polycrisis of interrelated disruptions and compounding economic and subjective uncertainty that likely shaped fertility in high‐income countries, especially in its second phase, in which the Ukraine war was a major source and amplifier of uncertainty. Yet fertility evidence remains largely limited to the pandemic. We estimate monthly “excess” total fertility rates (TFRs) and find that declines compared to projected pre‐polycrisis trends were short‐lived during the first phase and excess TFRs overall positive in all 26 sample countries except Eastern Europe and Portugal. Instead, during the second phase, excess TFRs are strongly and increasingly negative in Eastern and Central Europe, Greece, Portugal, France, Denmark, and Sweden. Investigating potential explanatory variables, we find that the total, energy, and housing consumer price indices and reversed consumer confidence are negatively associated with excess TFRs, especially in Eastern and Central Europe, Greece, France, Denmark, and Sweden. Refugee inflows, the economic policy uncertainty index, and the geopolitical risk index show weaker negative associations. But country heterogeneity is large. Our analysis suggests that fertility dynamics are closely linked to the polycrisis, citizens’ economic conditions and confidence are the strongest correlates, and extensive welfare regimes alone may not consistently sustain fertility under accumulating uncertainty.
Substantial demographic and democratic changes have unfolded globally in recent history, inviting inquiry into the relationship between these two phenomena. Joining the growing research in political demography, we advance a conceptual framework that links structural demographic factors to democratic progress and decline through economic, ideological, and representational mechanisms. Guided by this framework, we analyze two key demographic factors using an original longitudinal dataset covering 153 countries from 1975 to 2020. The results demonstrate a nonlinear and context-dependent relationship between demography and democracy. Specifically, population aging and immigration levels are generally associated with lower levels of democracy; though in the case of immigration, this relationship weakens as immigrant shares increase, indicating a nonlinear pattern. Importantly, demography is not destiny: the relationship between population structure and democracy is further shaped by economic and political contexts. Overall, this paper underscores the profound and nuanced ways in which structural demographic change shapes democratic outcomes.
Despite both homicide and suicide being identified as global public health concerns, it is unclear whether and how homicide trends could shape suicide patterns, particularly in low-or-middle income countries. We use the case of Mexico, an upper-middle-income country that experienced a dramatic increase in homicide after a shift in drug-enforcement policy in 2006, to evaluate the relationship between community violence and suicide. Our analysis relies on geocoded death certificates microdata for the entire national territory to assess the association between homicide rates and suicide rates at the municipality level for the 2000-2019 period. We find evidence of positive associations between homicide rates and suicide within six months of exposure to high homicide levels, and especially in the period immediately after homicide spikes relative to the violence baseline in the previous three years. These surges in suicide are primarily driven by auto-inflicted strangulation. No changes in suicide were identified after more than six months of exposure to high homicide levels, or as exposure to increasing homicides accumulated in the long term. Our results are consistent with violence spikes predicting an instant but transitory increase in suicide, plausibly by causing acute fear, stress, and uncertainty in the period immediately surrounding drastic surges in violence.
