A test of the instability hypothesis in low- and middle-income countries.

The instability hypothesis proposes that family structure transitions lead to negative child outcomes through the pathway of stress. However, in many cases, family structure transitions are not associated with stress or negative child outcomes, suggesting that there are specific circumstances under which transitions are more or less stressful. Using five rounds of data (ages 1-15) from the Young Lives study ( = 8,062) which follows children and their caregivers in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam, we had two aims: (a) to test the instability hypothesis, and (b) to examine the specific circumstances under which family structure transitions lead to stress and worsened child physical health.

Family Structure Transitions: Prevalence and Physical Health Effects in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam.

This study aimed to identify the prevalence and physical health consequences of family structure transitions among children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. In many high-income countries, family structure transitions are common, and research suggests that they can lead to worse physical health for children. However, we know little about either the prevalence or consequences of family structure transitions for children in low-and middle-income countries, who make up the vast majority of the world's children.

Are Children Barriers to the Gender Revolution? International Comparisons.

Children seem to present a barrier to the gender revolution in that parents are more likely to divide paid and domestic work along traditional gender lines than childless couples are. However, the extent to which this is so varies between countries and over time. We used data on 35 countries from the 2012 International Social Survey Programme to identify the contexts in which parents and non-parents differ the most in their division of labour.

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010-14.

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children's mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children's actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not.

Educational reversals and first-birth timing in sub-Saharan Africa: a dynamic multilevel approach.

In many areas throughout sub-Saharan Africa, young adult cohorts are less educated than their predecessors because of declines in school enrollments during the 1980s and 1990s. Because a woman with little education typically becomes a mother earlier and has more children than one with better education, and because of a similar well-established relationship between current education and current fertility at the societal level, one might expect such education reversals to raise fertility. However, if there is an additional negative effect of low educational level among currently young women compared with that in the past, which would accord with ideas about the impact of relative deprivation, the total effect of an education reversal may run in either direction.

Men's influence on the onset and progress of fertility decline in Ghana, 1988-98.

While lower fertility is commonly associated with women's reproductive autonomy, we demonstrate that the influence of men's education on reproductive decision-making increased during the first decade of rapid fertility decline in Ghana. Husband's education exerts a stronger influence on wife's fertility intentions than does her own education, and the magnitude of the effect of his education increased significantly from 1988 to 1998. Lower fertility in Ghana seems to be associated more with men's declining fertility desires than with women's increasing reproductive autonomy.

Does discussion of family planning improve knowledge of partner's attitude toward contraceptives?

Context: Results from an analysis of 1998 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from Kenya, where the approval rate of family planning is 90%, have cast doubt on the assumption that spousal discussion improves knowledge of partner's attitude toward family planning. However, it is not known whether this finding also applies to contexts more typical of Sub-Saharan Africa, where approval is not as high.

Methods: DHS data from 21 Sub-Saharan African countries were used to assess the relationship between spousal discussion and correct reporting of partner's attitude toward family planning.

Continuity of women's work, breastfeeding, and fertility in Ghana in the 1980s.

Much of the inconsistency that has appeared in studies of the effect of women's work on fertility in less developed countries has been attributed to the varying accessibility of employment in the modern sector. The analysis presented in this paper shows that continuity of work matters more than sector of work. It also confirms that, even in a setting of low contraceptive prevalence, increased fecundity associated with the less intense breastfeeding practices of working women do not result in shorter birth intervals.