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Drawing on more than 30 years of nationally representative microdata from the General Social Survey, this article comprehensively updates recent trends in ideal family size in the United States. It first documents stability in ideal family sizes between the mid-1980s and 2018, even in the face of a recent fertility decline. Next, the study adopts a latent class approach that identifies typologies of "reproductive orientations," defined as multidimensional mental models of reproduction encompassing ideal family size, attitudes toward reproductive labor, and views on reproduction contexts. The findings indicate three distinct classes of reproductive orientations: Progressive Familialists, Conservative Familialists, and Blended Egalitarians. Further analyses suggest that the prevalence of these classes has changed over time and that class membership is associated with distinct patterns of childbearing and marriage. These findings deepen contemporary understandings of ideal family size in the United States and have broader implications for how demographers conceptualize and measure fertility preferences across diverse contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive literature has focused on the association between human, social, and economic capital and better immigrant economic attainment, and how these characteristics contribute to stratification among members of the same group. However, few studies have explored how racialization processes contribute to these within-group differences. We examine the role of intragroup differences in skin tone in stratifying outcomes among Mexican immigrants in the early twentieth century. We create a new dataset of 1910–1940 Mexican border-crossing records that we then link to the U.S. 1940 census. We use characteristics at entry to predict income in 1940 and find that—in line with dominant assimilation theories—standard measures of capital are associated with within-group attainment differences. However, we also find skin tone to be a source of within-group stratification: being perceived as having darker skin is associated with lower subsequent economic attainment than being perceived as having lighter skin. Furthermore, whereas human and social capital transcended context to allow migrants to transfer those skills anywhere, the effect of skin tone was significant only in Texas and not in other major receiving places like California. We argue that although standard measures of assimilation typically predict later outcomes, the stratifying effect of skin tone has long been a feature of Mexican immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transgender population is a critically underresearched population in the United States, owing to rare measures on national and state-level surveys that ask about sex and gender or transgender identification. Consequently, we know relatively less about the sociodemographic, socioeconomic, family, and health lives of gender minorities. In this research note, I use population-level data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to provide a data portrait of cisgender, transgender, and gender-nonconforming populations on a range of sociodemographic (e.g., sexual identity, race and ethnicity), socioeconomic (e.g., education, homeownership), family (e.g., union status), and health (e.g., number of poor mental health days) characteristics. Results reveal that gender minorities are younger than cisgender men and cisgender women and are disproportionately sexual minorities and people of color. Gender minority groups also experience lower socioeconomic status, report drastically different family lives, and bear the burden of worse health compared with cisgender people. I conclude by contending that descriptive research of this nature can illuminate compositional differences between cisgender and gender minority populations, provide rationales for adjusting for certain characteristics, and highlight potential explanatory mechanisms to make better sense of well-established findings (e.g., the transgender health disadvantage). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to infectious diseases in early life has been linked to increased mortality risk in later life in high-disease settings, such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Less is known about the long-term effects of early-life disease exposure in milder disease environments. This study estimates heterogeneous effects from disease exposure in infancy on later-life mortality in twentieth-century Sweden, by socioeconomic status at birth and sex. Using historical population data for southern Sweden, we study 11,515 individuals who were born in 1905–1929 from age 1 until age 85. We measure exposure to disease using the local post–early neonatal mortality rate in the first 12 months after birth and apply flexible parametric survival models. For females, we find a negative effect on life expectancy (scarring) at ages 1–85 following high disease exposure in infancy, particularly for those born to unskilled workers. For males, we find no negative effect on later-life survival, likely because stronger mortality selection in infancy outweighs scarring. Thus, even as the incidence of infectious diseases declined at the start of the twentieth century, early-life disease exposure generated long-lasting negative but heterogeneous population health effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central premise of the first demographic transition theory is that demographic change would occur more slowly in rural than urban areas. Few studies, however, have investigated whether rural areas remain holdouts during the second demographic transition. To address this gap, this study (1) examines trends among rural and urban families in Canada and the United States over a 30-year period and (2) determines whether compositional differences in demographic, socioeconomic, and religious factors explain current differences between rural and urban families. We find that rural Canadian women continue to have, on average, 0.6 more children than urban women. However, rural families do not trail behind urban families on any other indicator of family change. In fact, rural women in both countries are now significantly more likely to cohabit and roughly 10 percentage points more likely to have children outside of marriage than urban women. These differences are largely explained by lower levels of education and income among rural American women and fewer immigrants in rural Canada. Examining family change through a rural–urban lens fills important empirical gaps and yields novel insights into current debates on the fundamental causes of ongoing family change in high-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Causal life course research examining consequences of early-life exposures has largely relied on associations between early-life environments and later-life outcomes using exogenous environmental shocks. Nonetheless, even with (quasi-)randomized early-life exposures, these associations may reflect not only causation ("scarring") but also selection (i.e., which members are included in data assessing later life). Investigating this selection and its impacts on estimated effects of early-life conditions has, however, often been ignored because of a lack of pre-exposure data. This study proposes an approach for assessing and correcting selection, separately from scarring, using genetic measurements. Because genetic measurements are determined at the time of conception, any associations with early-life exposures should be interpreted as selection. Using data from the UK Biobank, we find that in utero exposure to a higher area-level infant mortality rate is associated with genetic predispositions correlated with better educational attainment and health. These findings point to the direction and magnitude of selection from this exposure. Corrections for this selection in examinations of effects of exposure on later educational attainment suggest underestimates of 26–74%; effects on other life course outcomes also vary across selection correction methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I document the transmission of a grandfather's net nutritional deprivation and psychosocial stress in young adulthood across multiple generations using the grandfather's ex-prisoner of war (ex-POW) status in the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). Using a newly created dataset, I uncover an association between a grandfather's ex-POW status and the longevity after age 45 of his sons and male-line grandsons but not of his daughters, granddaughters, female-line grandsons, children-in-law, or grandchildren-in-law. Male-line grandsons lost roughly a year of life at age 45 (4% of remaining life expectancy) if descended from ex-POWs who suffered severe captivity conditions than if descended from non-POWs. If their grandfathers faced a less harsh captivity, male-line grandsons lost less than a year of life compared with those descended from non-POWs. I find that the grandfather's age at exposure and the grandson's education, as well as the son's and the grandson's poor late gestational conditions (proxied by season of birth), mediate this relationship. I rule out socioeconomic status, marriage and mortality selection, and cultural or psychological transmission from grandfathers to grandsons as explanations. I cannot rule out an epigenetic explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational transmission processes have long been of interest to demographers, but prior research on the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contact is relatively sparse and limited by its lack of attention to the correlated "family troubles" and familial incarceration that predate criminal justice contact. In this article, we provide a test of the intergenerational transmission of criminal justice contact after adjusting extensively for these factors that predate such contact by linking longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods with official arrest histories from 1995 to 2020. The results provide support for three conclusions. First, parental criminal justice contact is associated with a shorter time to first arrest and a larger number of arrests even after rigorously accounting for selection. Second, robustness checks demonstrate that neither the magnitude nor the significance of the findings is sensitive to model choices. Third, associations are strongest among White individuals and inconsistently significant for African American and Hispanic individuals. Despite large recent crime declines, the results indicate that parental criminal justice contact elevates the criminal justice contact of the adult children of the prison boom, independent of the often-overlooked troubles that predate criminal justice contact, and that these associations are strongest among the White population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship indicates that sexual minority adults have higher caregiving rates than heterosexuals and that women are more likely to be caregivers than men. However, little research has addressed how gender and sexuality intersect in shaping caregiving status. This study uses data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and aggregates a probability-based sample of adults living in 36 U.S. states between 2015 and 2021. We examine who provides care among adult heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women. Results reveal that women are more likely to be caregivers than men, but only among heterosexuals. We find little variation in caregiving by sexuality among women, but bisexual men are more likely than heterosexual men to be caregivers; the latter result appears to be driven by unpartnered, bisexual men. Lastly, we contextualize caregivers' experiences and reveal selected descriptive differences in patterns of care recipient--caregiver relationships across gender and sexual identity groups. Our findings advance understanding of caregiving and changing family ties in an era of population aging and increasing diversity in sexual identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intensive agriculture and deep plowing caused topsoil erosion and dust storms during the 1930s, affecting agricultural income and land values for years. Given the growing literature on the relevance of in utero and early-life exposures, it is surprising that studies focusing on links between the Dust Bowl and later-life health have produced inconclusive and mixed results. We reevaluate this literature and study the long-term effects of in utero and early-life exposure to topsoil erosion caused by the 1930s Dust Bowl on old-age longevity. Specifically, using Social Security Administration death records linked with the full-count 1940 census, we conduct event studies with difference-in-differences designs to compare the longevity of individuals in high- versus low-topsoil-erosion counties before versus after 1930. We find intent-to-treat reductions in longevity of approximately 0.85 months for those born in high-erosion counties after 1930. We show that these effects are not an artifact of preexisting trends in longevity. Additional analyses suggest that the effects are more pronounced among children raised in farm households, females, and those whose mothers had lower education. We also provide suggestive evidence that reductions in adulthood income are a likely mechanism for the effects we document. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have examined the racial disparities in household characteristics, homeownership, and familial transfer as primary drivers of the Black-White wealth gap in the United States. This study assesses the importance of stock-linked assets in generating wealth inequality. As financial assets become a growing component of household portfolios, the Black-White wealth gap is increasingly associated with the racial disparity in stock-linked assets. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this study shows that the contribution of stock-linked assets to the Black-White wealth gap has expanded in both absolute and relative terms, surpassing those of homeownership and business equity. Furthermore, a substantial disparity in financial wealth exists even for otherwise similar Black and White households. Although the disparity is larger among those with more economic resources, a gap remains among those with less. Lastly, our analysis shows that the combination of lower ownership levels and lower returns on financial wealth among Black households could account for a quarter of the Black-White wealth accumulation gap, net of differences in current net worth and household characteristics. Our findings suggest that considering financial assets is critical for understanding contemporary racial wealth inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript examines the relationship between child mortality and subsequent fertility using longitudinal data on births and childhood deaths occurring among 15,291 Tanzanian mothers between 2000 and 2015. Generalized hazard regression analyses assess the effect of child loss on the hazard of conception, adjusting for child-level, mother-level, and contextual covariates. Results show that time to conception is most reduced if an index child dies during the subsequent birth interval, representing the combined effect of biological and volitional replacement. Deaths occurring during prior birth intervals were associated with accelerated time to conception during future intervals, consistent with hypothesized insurance effects of anticipating future child loss, but this effect is smaller than replacement effects. The analysis reveals that residence in areas of relatively high child mortality is associated with hastened parity progression, again consistent with the insurance hypothesis. Investigation of high-order interactions suggests that insurance effects tend to be greater in low-mortality communities, replacement effects tend to be stronger in highmortality community contexts, and wealthier families tend to exhibit a weaker insurance response but a stronger replacement response to childhood mortality relative to poorer families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the economic assimilation of recent U.S.-born children of immigrants who form the new second generation has disproportionately focused on their educational attainment and other early-life outcomes. In this study, we examine the earnings trajectories of second-generation men through a large part of their adult lives using a unique dataset that links respondents from more than two decades of the Current Population Survey to their longitudinal tax records. This longitudinal information allows us to compare the progress second-generation men of different race and ethnicity make in narrowing the earnings gaps with later generations. We consider the extent to which differences in educational attainment and in early occupational placement affect the earnings trajectories of second-generation men. New second-generation men as a whole experience considerable earnings mobility during their lifetimes. However, we also find large differences by race and ethnicity that cannot be fully explained by educational attainment. Second-generation Hispanic men in particular begin their careers with an earnings deficit relative to later-generation White men and fall further behind. Thus, the stalling or reversal in Hispanic economic assimilation appears to begin during the course of the second generation rather than in later generations as previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widening of socioeconomic inequalities in most developed countries makes it essential to improve understanding of the mechanisms underpinning social reproduction--that is, the transmission of advantage and disadvantage between generations. This article proposes that internal migration plays a role in transmitting socioeconomic inequalities. Theoretically, the article formulates a conceptual framework building on three lines of inquiry: (1) the intergenerational transmission of internal migration behavior, (2) the role of internal migration in social mobility, and (3) the educational selectivity of internal migration. Empirically, the article quantifies the links between long-distance internal migration and social reproduction in 15 European countries by using a structural equation model on retrospective life history data. The results show that children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to migrate, increasing their chances of migrating in adulthood, which is associated with higher socioeconomic status later in life. In addition, advantaged children are more likely to migrate to urban centers with their greater educational and employment opportunities. These results illuminate the socioeconomic impact of internal migration across generations, highlight the importance of conceptualizing internal migration as a life course trajectory, and emphasize the lifelong legacy of childhood migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lagging fertility transition in West Africa has important repercussions for global population growth but remains poorly understood. Inspired by Caldwell and colleagues' fertility transition framework, as well as by subsequent research, we examine diversity in women's holistic childbearing trajectories in Niakhar, Senegal, between the early 1960s and 2018 using a sequence analysis approach. We evaluate the prevalence of different trajectories, their contribution to overall fertility levels, and their association with women's socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. Four trajectories were observed: "high fertility," "delayed entry," "truncated," and "short." While the high fertility trajectory was most prevalent across cohorts, delayed entry grew in importance. The high fertility trajectory was more common among women born between 1960 and 1969 and was followed less often by divorced women and those from polygynous households. Women with primary education and those from higher status groups were more likely to experience delayed entry. The truncated trajectory was associated with lack of economic wealth, polygynous households, and caste membership. A short trajectory was related to lack of agropastoral wealth, divorce, and possibly secondary sterility. Our study advances knowledge on fertility transitions in Niakhar--and Sahelian West African contexts more generally--by showing the diversity of childbearing trajectories within high fertility regional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The premise that a woman’s social status has intergenerational effects on her children’s health has featured prominently in population science research and in development policy. This study focuses on an important case in which social hierarchy has such an effect. In joint patrilocal households in rural India, women married to the younger brother are assigned lower social rank than women married to the older brother in the same household. Almost 8% of rural Indian children under 5 years old—more than 6 million children—live in such households. We show that children of lower-ranking moth­ers are less likely to sur­vive and have worse health out­comes, reflected in higher neonatal mortality and shorter height, compared with children of higher-ranking mothers in the same household. That the variation in mothers’ social status that we study is not subject to reporting bias is an advantage relative to studies using self-reported measures. We present evidence that one mechanism for this effect is maternal nutrition: although they are not shorter, lower-ranking mothers weigh less than higher-ranking mothers. These results suggest that programs that merely make transfers to households without attention to intrahousehold distribution may not improve child outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of extreme heat on birth outcomes and how this effect may vary by family socioeconomic status (SES). We create a detailed data set by linking individual-level data on approximately 4 million newborns in Spanish provincial capitals between 1990 and 2016 with precise meteorological data on the temperatures children experienced throughout their gestation. The outcomes are preterm birth, low birth weight, and very low birth weight. Socioeconomic status is assessed using parents’ highest occupational level. We find that the incidence of negative birth outcomes increased for children exposed to extreme heat in early gestation. Further, the effect is concentrated mostly among children from a low socioeconomic background. Given the importance of birth outcomes for the next generation’s well-being, our results highlight the potential contributions of extreme temperatures to the widening of preexisting socioeconomic inequalities. The forecasted increase in extreme climatic events makes the results of this study concerning, especially for low-SES children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]