{"title":"Temperature shocks and childbearing in Australia.","authors":"Akwasi Ampofo, Sefa Awaworyi Churchill","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2716238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2716238","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We investigate the impact of temperature shocks on household childbearing decisions in Australia using 21 rounds of longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. We explore the relationship between deviations in average temperature and fertility outcomes by integrating high-resolution satellite temperature data at postcode level with detailed household fertility information from HILDA. Our findings reveal that temperature shocks, particularly cold shocks, significantly reduce fertility: a one standard deviation from the thermally optimal temperature is associated with a 1 percentage point decrease in the probability of childbirth within two to three years. We further examine potential mechanisms underlying this relationship and find that decreased disposable income, poorer health outcomes, reduced fertility desires or intentions, and lower life satisfaction contribute to reduced fertility. These findings highlight the multifaceted ways in which temperature shocks can influence demographic trends, offering important insights for policymakers addressing the socio-economic impacts of climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148946135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mobile technologies, fertility preferences, and the calculus of conscious choice.","authors":"Lyman Stone, Luca Maria Pesando","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2716237","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2716237","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study explores the relationship between mobile technologies (MTs) and fertility preferences across 42 low- and middle-income countries. Theoretically, we shift the focus from TV/radio to mobile phones, Internet, and smartphones, building on a blend of diffusion and world society perspectives. Methodologically, we explore non-numeric and numeric fertility-preference outcomes using Demographic and Health Surveys. Associations with non-numeric ideals reveal that women owning MTs are less likely to report uncertainty, fatalism, or ambiguity in their preferences, a pattern consistent with MTs helping to move fertility into the calculus of conscious choice. Conversely, associations with numeric ideals are more consistent with MTs being linked to broader schemas of choice and agency than with uniform reductions in desired family size per se. Importantly, MTs are associated with higher desires to have children for women with no children or one child but lower desires for women with two or more children, providing evidence of selective convergence around the two-child norm, driven by high-fertility contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-23"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-09-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148946050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Liliana P Calderón-Bernal, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Martin Kolk, Emilio Zagheni
{"title":"Assessing the agreement between microsimulated and register-based kin counts in Sweden.","authors":"Liliana P Calderón-Bernal, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Martin Kolk, Emilio Zagheni","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2706778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2706778","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Estimating kinship networks is a data-intensive undertaking, usually conducted using empirical sources or demographic models. Although empirical data, such as population registers, provide observed individual-level information, they are limited by availability, truncation, and survivorship bias. Demographic models, including microsimulation, require less detailed data, but they often minimally account for population heterogeneity, family similarity, and multi-partner fertility. This study examines the agreement of kin counts (from grandparents to grandchildren) between SOCSIM microsimulation outputs and Swedish population registers for cohorts born between 1915 and 2017. The results show that microsimulation closely approximates mean kin numbers and reasonably reflects parity distributions. Microsimulation underestimates kin for recent cohorts not affected by truncation but provides a more accurate representation of kin for earlier cohorts with missing parent-child links. These findings highlight the utility of microsimulation for reconstructing kinship when only population-level rates are available, supporting its application in kinship analyses, both historical and projected.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148621981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Antonino Polizzi, Andrea M Tilstra, Luyin Zhang, Jennifer Beam Dowd
{"title":"Why is life expectancy in England & Wales falling behind? A cause-of-death decomposition approach.","authors":"Antonino Polizzi, Andrea M Tilstra, Luyin Zhang, Jennifer Beam Dowd","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2682462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2682462","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Life expectancy in England & Wales has diverged from that of its high-income peers since 2011, raising concerns that the country may become an international laggard like the United States (US). Using the contour method, we decompose gaps in life expectancy between England & Wales and 20 individual high-income countries for males and females in 2019 into: (a) pre-existing differences in age- and cause-specific death rates in 2011; and (b) diverging trends in these rates between 2011 and 2019. Focusing on trends, we find that external mortality at young-to-middle ages, cardiometabolic mortality at middle-to-older ages, and dementia mortality at older ages contributed most to life expectancy gaps. Although England & Wales and the US shared adverse trends in cardiometabolic and external mortality, England & Wales experienced larger life expectancy gains. Our findings underscore the urgency of improving population health in England & Wales to avoid life expectancy falling further behind.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148593978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alyona Artamonova, Milla Salonen, Takayuki Hiraoka, Mirkka Lahdenperä, Jari Saramäki, Anna Rotkirch, Virpi Lummaa
{"title":"The role of living kin in later-life survival: Evidence from Finnish historical data.","authors":"Alyona Artamonova, Milla Salonen, Takayuki Hiraoka, Mirkka Lahdenperä, Jari Saramäki, Anna Rotkirch, Virpi Lummaa","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2699960","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2699960","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on kinship and survival is well established in modern societies, but less is known about historical populations. This study examines the presence of children, siblings, and grandchildren in later life and their association with survival in pre-industrial Finland. We use records of 6,900 Finns born in 1740-1859 to estimate discrete-time hazard models for mortality at ages 50-90. At age 50, most individuals had at least one living child or sibling, although only one-fifth had a grandchild. Merely having a child or sibling did not guarantee better survival. However, men with both sons and daughters or with at least one grandchild experienced lower odds of dying. Having siblings, particularly sisters, became beneficial for survival after age 70. These findings highlight the nuanced role of kin, suggesting that their historical association with longevity varied by kin type and sex and by the individual's age and sex.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148580715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mark Gortfelder, Allan Puur, Martin Klesment, Lauri Leppik
{"title":"The effect of political violence on fertility in mid-twentieth-century Estonia.","authors":"Mark Gortfelder, Allan Puur, Martin Klesment, Lauri Leppik","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2698945","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2698945","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Estonia lost its independence during the Second World War, experiencing both Russian (1940-41, 1944-91) and German (1941-44) occupation, which brought significant political violence, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s. This paper analyses the effect of these repressions on fertility, using two studies. First, we use data collected between 1994 and 2005 from surveys that included extended questions on the lives of respondents' parents, including their experiences of repression. Second, we use biographical data on Estonian men who volunteered in the Finnish army. Applying Poisson and logistic regression models, we demonstrate that severe political repression (death, long-term imprisonment, deportation, and/or exile) reduced the fertility of cohorts who were in their prime childbearing ages during the 1940s and 1950s. We discuss these results in the wider context of the absence of a post-war baby boom in Estonia in contrast to those in countries that were part of the 'First World' during the Cold War.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-17"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148580706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pathways to childlessness in Spain: Exploring the intersection of partnership and employment trajectories.","authors":"Mariona Lozano, Sergi Vidal, Alícia Adserà","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2026.2682465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2026.2682465","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Spain's fertility is among the lowest in the world, due largely to an increasing number of childless women. Childlessness, whether a voluntary choice or not, often results from postponement of childbearing. This delay could be driven partly by the increased instability of partnerships and adverse labour-market conditions. Using data from Spain's Fertility Survey 2018, we use multichannel sequence analysis to identify the most common patterns of partnering and employment trajectories and then assess the likelihood of remaining childless at age 40 for each pattern. Results indicate that pathways deviating from the traditional marital pattern are highly associated with childlessness. When these trajectories are coupled with high attachment to the labour market, the likelihood of remaining childless increases further. These associations are moderated by education. Partnership status is a stronger determinant of childlessness than employment status, especially for highly educated women.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148580681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Women's education and fertility in select countries of Africa and Asia: Moderation by quality of education.","authors":"Shuang Chen","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2025.2523761","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00324728.2025.2523761","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite a large literature on education and fertility, most studies are narrowly focused on the level of schooling completed. Does the schooling-fertility relationship depend on the quality of education? Is more schooling still associated with lower fertility even when the quality of education is poor? Drawing on Demographic and Health Survey data from 42 countries in Africa and Asia, this study uses cross-national analysis to examine whether the quality of education moderates the schooling-fertility relationship. Findings show that the strength of the schooling-fertility relationship depends significantly on a country's quality of education: the higher the quality of education, the stronger the negative relationship. But even when educational quality is low, a negative relationship between level of schooling and fertility still exists. By conceptually and empirically distinguishing the level of schooling from the quality of education, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of women's education and fertility.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"215-237"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144700103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The role of deaths following childbirth in sex differences in mortality.","authors":"George C Alter","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2025.2573923","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00324728.2025.2573923","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In historical populations, death rates for females often exceeded those of males in reproductive ages. However, childbirth-related deaths were not the only cause of excess mortality among adult women. This study expands on work by Schofield and colleagues by re-examining mortality after childbirth in the Cambridge Group Family Reconstitutions. Part 1 applies event history methods in a new way to focus on excess mortality following childbirth. Unlike previous methods, which assumed equal background mortality for wives and husbands, this method compares maternal and paternal mortality. The results show higher mortality for females than males even after removing deaths following childbirth. Part 2 explores the determinants of maternal deaths in the puerperal period. Deaths of new mothers rose when their husbands and children were more likely to die, but the risks of death for new mothers were much higher than for other married adults. These results highlight the extraordinary vulnerability of mothers in the weeks following childbirth.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"389-404"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145460235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shifting the reproductive window: The contribution of ART and egg donation to fertility rates in the UK.","authors":"Luzia Bruckamp, Ester Lazzari","doi":"10.1080/00324728.2025.2561595","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00324728.2025.2561595","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Delayed childbearing in advanced economies has increased reliance on assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Yet, how ART and especially donor egg treatments contribute to population-level fertility rates remains under-studied. Analysing all ART treatments in the UK (1991-2018), we document rising ART usage: ART-conceived births contributed 3.0 per cent to the total fertility rate in 2018 and 14.9 per cent to fertility rates among women aged 45-50. ART success rates show a clear age-related decline when using women's own eggs but remain consistent across age groups when using donor eggs. Consequently, from age 43 onwards, ART-conceived births result predominantly from donor egg treatments. Our findings indicate that fertility recuperation at advanced ages is unlikely to succeed with ART using a patient's own eggs; egg donation and egg freezing appear indispensable for supporting fertility at advanced ages with ART. This has significant implications for public health communication, as this fact is not widely known.</p>","PeriodicalId":47814,"journal":{"name":"Population Studies-A Journal of Demography","volume":" ","pages":"321-333"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7618353/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145379145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}