Status (in)consistency in education and violent parenting practices towards children.

Violent childrearing practices represent an invisible threat for global health and human development. Leveraging underused information on child discipline methods, this study explores the relationship between parental educational similarity and violent childrearing practices, testing a new potential pathway through which parental educational similarity may relate to child health and wellbeing over the life course. The study uses data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) covering 27 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Results suggest that couples where partners share the same level of education (homogamy) are less likely to adopt violent childrearing practices relative to couples where partners face status inconsistency in education (heterogamy), with differences by age of the child, yet less so by sex and birth order. Homogamous couples where both partners share high levels of education are also less (more) likely to adopt physically violent (non-violent) practices relative to homogamous couples with low levels of education. Relationships are stronger in countries characterized by higher GDP per capita, Human Development Index, and female education, yet also in countries with higher income and gender inequalities. Besides stressing the importance of female education, these findings underscore the key role of status concordance vs discordance in SSA partnerships. Tested micro-level mechanisms and country-level moderators only weakly explain result heterogeneity, calling for more research on the topic.

Increases in child marriage among the poorest in Mali: 'Reverse policies' or data quality issues?

Child marriage is associated with adverse outcomes related to women's well-being. Many countries have introduced laws banning this practice, and a number of studies have evaluated their impact. Scant research has focused on instances where countries have lowered the legal minimum age at marriage, even though such 'reverse policies' could result in stalled or uneven progress in eradicating child marriage. Using visualization techniques, regression analyses, and multiple robustness checks, we document changes in the prevalence of child marriage in Mali, where in 2011 the general minimum age at marriage of 18 was lowered to 16. Since 2011, the prevalence of child marriage has progressively increased among women with no education and women living in communities characterized by low local development. We reflect on the role that data collection processes may play in explaining some of these findings and stress how repealing existing provisions aiming to protect girls can have adverse consequences on the most vulnerable social strata.

Mobile phones and infant health at birth.

There is increasing evidence that digital technologies such as mobile phones have the potential to shape some of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as health, education, and nutrition, even among the most resource-deprived countries and communities in the world. Nonetheless, little research has focused on the intergenerational implications of digital technologies for infant health and wellbeing. This study leverages Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 29 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to explore associations between mothers' ownership of mobile phones and their children's health at birth, as measured by birth weight and low birth weight (LBW), i.e., weight lower than 2,500 grams. Infants born to women owning mobile phones fare consistently better in terms of birth weight, even after accounting for potential socioeconomic confounders and other sources of media or information in the household. Partly, mechanisms are consistent with the idea of broader knowledge and access to healthcare services, as associations are mediated by a higher number of antenatal visits, higher likelihood of having a birth assisted by a health professional, and by the extent to which mothers hear about family planning by text message. Associations are strongest among low-educated mothers. Also, associations are stronger in countries where infant health is poorer yet mobile-phone diffusion is higher, highlighting the comparatively higher potential of the diffusion of mobile phones for global development in poorest contexts. Our findings may be of interest to scholars and policymakers concerned with identifying relatively cheap policy levers to promote global health and wellbeing in disadvantaged contexts, particularly among women.

Union formation, within-couple dynamics, and child well-being: A global macrolevel perspective.

Studies on global changes in families have greatly increased over the past decade, adopting both a country-specific and, more recently, a cross-national comparative perspective. While most studies are focused on the drivers of global changes in families, little comparative research has explored the implications of family processes for the health and well-being of children. This study aims to fill this gap and launch a new research agenda exploring the intergenerational implications of union-formation and within-couple dynamics for children's health and well-being across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), both globally, regionally, and by the stage of fertility transition. We do so by adopting a macro-level perspective and a multi-axis conceptualization of children's outcomes - health at birth, health in later life, and schooling - and leveraging Demographic and Health Survey and World Bank data across 75 LMICs. Our results show that in societies where partnerships are characterized by more equal status between spouses - i.e., where the age range between spouses and differences in years of schooling between partners are narrower - children fare better on several outcomes. These associations are particularly strong in mid- and high-fertility settings. Despite a series of regularities, our results also highlight a set of findings whereby, at a macro-level, the prevalence of marriage and divorce/separation are not invariably associated with children's outcomes, especially in LMICs where fertility is comparatively lower. We document little cross-regional heterogeneity, primarily highlighting the centrality of demographic factors such as age vis-à-vis, for instance, region-specific characteristics that are more tied to the social fabric of specific societies.

Communication with Kin in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This study investigates patterns of communication among non-coresident kin in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic using data from the New York City Robin Hood Poverty Tracker. Over half of New Yorkers spoke to their non-coresident family members several times a week during the pandemic and nearly half increased their communication with non-coresident kin since March 2020. Siblings and extended kin proved to be especially important ties activated during the pandemic. New Yorkers were most likely to report increased communication with siblings. A quarter of respondents reported that they increased communication with at least one aunt, uncle, cousin, or other extended family member. While non-Hispanic White respondents reported the highest frequency of communication with kin, it was those groups most impacted by COVID-19 - foreign-born, Black, and Hispanic New Yorkers - who were most likely to report that they increased communication with kin in the wake of the pandemic.

Harnessing the Potential of Google Searches for Understanding Dynamics of Intimate Partner Violence Before and After the COVID-19 Outbreak.

Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external circumstances. This is for instance the case of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), a highly-prevalent social phenomenon which has drastically risen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores whether big data-an increasingly common tool to track, nowcast, and forecast social phenomena in close-to-real time-might help track and understand IPV dynamics. We leverage online data from Google Trends to explore whether online searches might help reach "hard-to-reach" populations such as victims of IPV using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV-both potential threat and actual violent cases-in Italy? Is their predictive power weaker or stronger in the aftermath of crises such as COVID-19? Our results suggest that online searches using selected keywords measuring different facets of IPV are a powerful tool to track potential threats of IPV before and during global-level crises such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, with stronger predictive power post outbreaks. Conversely, online searches help predict actual violence only in post-outbreak scenarios. Our findings, validated by a Facebook survey, also highlight the important role that socioeconomic status (SES) plays in shaping online search behavior, thus shedding new light on the role played by third-level digital divides in determining the predictive power of digital traces. More specifically, they suggest that forecasting might be more reliable among high-SES population strata. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10680-022-09619-2.

Safer If Connected? Mobile Technology and Intimate Partner Violence.

Mobile phones are an invaluable economic asset for low-income individuals and an important tool for strengthening social ties. They may also help women overcome physical boundaries, especially those who are separated from support networks and are bound within their husbands' social spheres. Using micro-level data on women and men from recent Demographic and Health Surveys, including new information on mobile phone ownership, this study examines whether women's ownership of mobile phones is associated with their likelihood of having experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) across 10 low- and middle-income countries. Findings show that women's ownership of mobile phones is associated with a 9%-12% decreased likelihood of emotional, physical, and sexual violence over the previous 12 months, even after controlling for characteristics proxying for socioeconomic status, household resources, and local development within the community. Estimates are negative in seven out of the 10 countries and results are robust to the use of nonparametric matching techniques and instrumental variables built through georeferenced ancillary sources. In exploring two potential mechanisms, I show that mobile phone ownership is positively associated with women's decision-making power within the household (decision-making power) and male partners' lower acceptability of IPV (attitudes). Findings speak to scholars and policymakers interested in how technology diffusion relates to dynamics of women's empowerment and global development.

A Four-Country Study on the Relationship Between Parental Educational Homogamy and Children's Health from Infancy to Adolescence.

This study explores the relationship between parental educational similarity - educational concordance (homogamy) or discordance (heterogamy) - and children's health outcomes. Its contribution is threefold. First and foremost, I use longitudinal data on children's health outcomes tracking children from age 1 to 15, thus being able to assess whether the relationship changes at key life-course and developmental stages of children. This is an important addition to the relevant literature, where the focus is solely on outcomes at birth. Second, I look at different health outcomes, namely height-for-age (HFA) and BMI-for-age (BFA) z-scores, alongside their dichotomized counterparts, stunting and thinness. Third, I conduct the same set of analyses in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, thus providing multi-context evidence from countries at different levels of development and with different socio-economic characteristics and gender dynamics. Results reveal important heterogeneity across contexts. In Ethiopia and India, parental educational homogamy is associated with worse health outcomes in infancy and childhood, while associations are positive in Peru and, foremost, Vietnam. Complementary estimates from matching techniques show that these associations tend to fade after age 1, except in Vietnam, where the positive relationship persists through adolescence, thus supporting the homogamy-benefit hypothesis not only at birth, but also across the early life course. Insights from this study contribute to the inequality debate on the intergenerational transmission of advantage and disadvantage and shed additional light on the relationship between early-life conditions and later-life outcomes in critical periods of children's lives.

Trends in child marriage and new evidence on the selective impact of changes in age-at-marriage laws on early marriage.

This study adopts a cohort perspective to explore trends in child marriage - defined as the proportion of girls who entered first union before the age of 18 - and the effectiveness of policy changes aimed at curbing child marriage by increasing the minimum legal age of marriage. We adopt a cross-national perspective comparing six low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that introduced changes in the minimum age at marriage over the past two decades. These countries belong to three broad regions: Sub-Saharan Africa (Benin, Mauritania), Central Asia (Tajikistan, Kazakhstan), and South Asia (Nepal, Bhutan). We combine individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys with longitudinal information on policy changes from the PROSPERED (Policy-Relevant Observational Studies for Population Health Equity and Responsible Development) project. We adopt data visualization techniques and a regression discontinuity design to obtain estimates of the effect of changes in age-at-marriage laws on early marriage. Our results suggest that changes in minimum-age-at-marriage laws were not effective in curbing early marriage in Benin, Mauritania, Kazakhstan, and Bhutan, where child marriage showed little evidence of decline across cohorts. Significant reductions in early marriage following law implementations were observed in Tajikistan and Nepal, yet their effectiveness depended on the model specification and window adopted, thus making them hardly effective as policies to shape girls' later life trajectories. Our findings align with existing evidence from other countries suggesting that changes in age-at-marriage laws rarely achieve the desired outcome. In order for changes in laws to be effective, better laws must be accompanied by better enforcement and monitoring to delay marriage and protect the rights of women and girls. Alternative policies need to be devised to ensure that girls' later-life outcomes, including their participation in higher education and society, are ensured, encouraged, and protected.

The Internetization of International Migration.

The Internet has revolutionized our economies, societies, and everyday lives. Many social phenomena are no longer the same as they were in the pre-Internet era: they have been "Internetized." We define the Internetization of international migration, and we investigate it by exploring the links between the Internet and migration outcomes all along the migration path, from migration intentions to actual migration. Our analyses leverage a number of sources, both at the micro- and the macro-level, including the Gallup World Poll, the Arab Barometer, data from the International Telecommunication Union, the Italian population register, and unique register data from a migrant reception center in Southern Italy. We also distinguish between economic migrants-those who leave their country of origin with the aim of seeking better economic opportunities elsewhere-and political migrants-those who are forced to leave their countries of origin for political or conflict-related reasons. Our findings point to a consistently positive relationship between the diffusion of the Internet, migration intentions, and migration behaviors, supporting the idea that the Internet is not necessarily a driving force of migration per se, but rather an enabling "supportive agent." These associations are particularly relevant for economic migrants, at least for migration intentions. Further analyses underscore the importance of the Internet in providing a key informational channel which helps to define clearer migration trajectories.

Educational Assortative Mating in Sub-Saharan Africa: Compositional Changes and Implications for Household Wealth Inequality.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is undergoing rapid transformations in the realm of union formation in tandem with significant educational expansion and rising labor force participation rates. Concurrently, the region remains the least developed and most unequal along multiple dimensions of human and social development. In spite of this unique scenario, never has the social stratification literature examined patterns and implications of educational assortative mating for inequality in SSA. Using 126 Demographic and Health Surveys from 39 SSA countries between 1986 and 2016, this study is the first to document changing patterns of educational assortative mating by marriage cohort, subregion, and household location of residence and relate them to prevailing sociological theories on mating and development. Results show that net of shifts in educational distributions, mating has increased over marriage cohorts in all subregions except for Southern Africa, with increases driven mostly by rural areas. Trends in rural areas align with the status attainment hypothesis, whereas trends in urban areas are consistent with the inverted U-curve framework and the increasing applicability of the general openness hypothesis. The inequality analysis conducted through a combination of variance decomposition and counterfactual approaches reveals that mating accounts for a nonnegligible share (3% to 12%) of the cohort-specific inequality in household wealth, yet changes in mating over time hardly move time trends in wealth inequality, which is in line with findings from high-income societies.

A Sequence-Analysis Approach to the Study of the Transition to Adulthood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

This study investigates whether young people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have experienced processes of destandardization of the life course similar to those observed in high-income societies. We provide two contributions to the relevant literature. First, we use data from 263 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 69 LMICs, offering the richest comparative account to date of women's transition to adulthood (TTA) patterns in the developing world. In so doing, we adopt sequence analysis and shift the focus from individual life-course events-namely first sexual intercourse, first union, and first birth-to a visually appealing approach that allows us to describe interrelations among events. By focusing on the analysis of trajectories rather than the occurrence of single events, the study provides an in-depth focus on the timing of events, time intervals between events, and how experiencing (or not) one event might have consequences for subsequent markers in the TTA in cross-national comparative perspective. Second, we identify clusters of TTA and explore their changes across cohorts by region and household location of residence (rural vs. urban). We document significant differences by macro-regions, yet relative stability across cohorts. We interpret the latter as suggestive of cultural specificities that make the TTA resistant to change and slow to converge across regions, if converging at all. Also, we find that much of the difference across cluster typologies ensues from variation related to when the transition begins (early vs. late), rather than from the duration between events, which tends to be uniformly quick across three out of four clusters.

Leveraging mobile phones to attain sustainable development.

For billions of people across the globe, mobile phones enable relatively cheap and effective communication, as well as access to information and vital services on health, education, society, and the economy. Drawing on context-specific evidence on the effects of the digital revolution, this study provides empirical support for the idea that mobile phones are a vehicle for sustainable development at the global scale. It does so by assembling a wealth of publicly available macro- and individual-level data, exploring a wide range of demographic and social development outcomes, and leveraging a combination of methodological approaches. Macro-level analyses covering 200+ countries reveal that mobile-phone access is associated with lower gender inequality, higher contraceptive uptake, and lower maternal and child mortality. Individual-level analyses of survey data from sub-Saharan Africa, linked with detailed geospatial information, further show that women who own a mobile phone are better informed about sexual and reproductive health services and empowered to make independent decisions. Payoffs are larger among the least-developed countries and among the most disadvantaged micro-level clusters. Overall, our findings suggest that boosting mobile-phone access and coverage and closing digital divides, particularly among women, can be powerful tools to attain empowerment-related sustainable development goals, in an ultimate effort to enhance population health and well-being and reduce poverty.

Kinship Practices Among Alternative Family Forms in Western Industrialized Societies.

OBJECTIVE: This paper discusses how kinship is construed and enacted in diverse forms of the family that are now part of the culturally pluralistic family system of Western societies. BACKGROUND: The study is the second in a pair documenting changes over the past century in the meaning and practice of kinship in the family system of Western societies with industrialized economies. While the first paper reviewed the history of kinship studies, this companion piece shifts the focus to research explorations of kinship in alternative family forms, those that depart from the standard nuclear family structure. METHOD: The review was conducted running multiple searches on Google Scholar and Web of Science directly targeting non-standard family forms, using search terms as "cohabitation and kinship," "same-sex family and kinship," and "Artificial Reproductive Technology and kinship," among others. About 70 percent of studies focused on the United States, while the remaining 30 percent focused on other industrialized Western societies. RESULTS: We identified three general processes by which alternative family forms are created and discussed how kinship practices work in each of them. The first cluster of alternative family forms comes about through variations of formal marriage or its absence, including sequential marriages, plural marriages, consensual unions, single parenthood, and same-sex marriages and partnerships. The second cluster is formed as a result of alterations in the reproduction process, when a child is not the product of sexual intercourse between two people. The third cluster results from the formation of voluntary bonds that are deemed to be kinship-like, in which affiliation rests on neither biological nor legal bases. CONCLUSION: Findings from this study point to a broad cultural acceptance of an inclusive approach to incorporating potential kin in "family relationships." It is largely left to individuals to decide whether they recognize or experience the diffuse sense of emotional connectedness and perceived obligation that characterizes the bond of kinship. Also, family scripts and kinship terms often borrow from the vocabulary and parenting practices observed in the standard family form in the West. Concurrently, the cultural importance of biology remains strong. IMPLICATIONS: The study concludes by identifying important gaps in the kinship literature and laying out a research agenda for the future, including building a demography of kinship.

Childlessness and upward intergenerational support: cross-national evidence from 11 European countries.

Childless individuals are often depicted as "selfish" as they opt out of raising children in favour of investing resources in themselves. Yet no research has investigated whether this claim holds in domains of social life such as intergenerational family support. Using data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) for 11 European countries, this article examines differences between childless and non-childless individuals in the provision of financial, practical, and emotional transfers to their elderly parents. Results support the idea that the childless are more prone to providing upward support than individuals with children. Specifically, estimates from multivariate logistic regression and propensity score specifications suggest that, ceteris paribus, childless adults are about 20 to 40 per cent more likely to provide support to their parents, with the association driven by transfers to elderly mothers. These findings enrich the literature on childlessness and ageing, and support the view that researchers and policy makers should take into more consideration not only what childless people receive or need in old age, but also what they provide as middle-aged adults.

Household Determinants of Teen Marriage: Sister Effects Across Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries.

This article investigates the household determinants of teen marriage in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam using data from the international Young Lives study tracking a cohort of children from the ages of 8-19 over a 15-year period. First, we offer a descriptive and comparative overview of the prevalence of teen marriage among girls in geographically selected areas of the four countries, together with their sociodemographic determinants. Second, we place a specific focus on the role of gender and sibling sex-composition in shaping the probability of getting married by age 19. Drawing on the significant cross-country heterogeneity in household context, direction of marriage payments, and prevalence of arranged marriage, we test hypotheses relating to the availability of economic resources within the household and cultural norms surrounding the order and timing of marriage. We show that in Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam, presence and number of older sisters in the household are associated with a 30-50 percent lower likelihood of teen marriage, while the association is null in Peru. Also, we show that having a girl as next-youngest sibling does not significantly affect girls' likelihood of experiencing teen marriage, except in Ethiopia. Our results combined support theories of family-level resource constraints over sibling rivalry hypotheses. Our findings enrich and complement existing evidence on the role of sibling sex-composition on adolescent outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.

Rethinking and Revising Goode's Contribution to Global Family Change.

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of William J. Goode's contribution to the study of global family and social change. I begin by describing Goode's theoretical perspectives and outlining his theses dating back to the 1960s. I then provide an assessment of where and why some of his predictions proved wrong and elaborate on what we have learnt on changes in families at the global level over the past half century. Lastly, I speculate on how Goode would rethink his arguments nowadays in light of fifty years of new evidence and scholarly developments - both theoretical and methodological. In so doing, I highlight shortcomings of current approaches and outline directions for future family research and theorizing.

Global Family Change: Persistent Diversity with Development.

This article provides a broad empirical overview of the relationship between family change and socioeconomic development drawing on 30-plus years of Demographic and Health Surveys data from 3.5 million respondents across 84 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We conduct two sets of analyses. First, we document global and regional-level associations between the Human Development Index (HDI) and novel indicators reflecting multi-dimensional family change. Second, we use methods from the growth convergence literature to examine whether-and in which domains-there is evidence of cross-country convergence in family indicators over levels of development. We show that families in LMICs have transformed in multiple ways, changing differently across domains, world regions, and genders. Fertility, intra-couple decision-making, and women's life-course timing indicators are strongly associated with HDI, yet cross-country convergence is limited to the latter domain. Marriage, cohabitation, household structure, and men's life-course timing indicators are more weakly associated with HDI, and span a broad spectrum of convergence dynamics ranging from divergence to modest convergence. We describe this scenario as "persistent diversity with development," and shed light on the underlying regional heterogeneity-driven primarily by sub-Saharan Africa.