Population Research and Policy Review

Mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia has the fastest rate of increase compared to all other major causes of death. High proportion of deaths in this category is indicative for low quality of mortality statistics. This article examines the trends and possible causes of mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia. During 1991–2005, mortality from ill-defined conditions in Russia increased in all age groups. The pace of increase was particularly high at working ages and the mean expected age at death from ill-defined conditions has shifted to younger ages, particularly for men. The analysis of individual medical death certificates issued in Kirov and Smolensk regions of Russia demonstrate that 89–100% of working-age deaths from ill-defined conditions correspond to human bodies found in a state of decomposition. Data from Smolensk region shows that over 60% of these decedents were unemployed. Temporal trends of mortality from ill-defined conditions and injuries of undetermined intent in Moscow city suggest that deaths from the latter cause were probably misclassified as ill-defined conditions. This practice can lead to underestimation of mortality from external causes. Growing number of socially isolated marginalized people in Russia and insufficient investigation of the circumstances of their death contribute to the observed trends in mortality from ill-defined conditions.

There have been major shifts at the state level in social and legal rights available to women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) individuals. Variation in policies across states has resulted in a patchwork of rights for these groups. In this study, we examine the effects of state-level policies on migration attitudes, including restrictions on abortion, gender-affirming medical care, transgender individuals’ access to sports in schools, discussions about gender and sexuality in schools, same-sex marriage, and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Drawing on survey data from 1061 participants, we pay particular attention to how state-level political context and sociodemographic factors shape desire to move to a state with newly restrictive gender and sexuality policies. Results indicate that restrictive state policies on abortion and LGBT issues serve as both push and pull factors affecting desire to move to a state. Although political orientation provides the greatest explanatory power for migration attitudes, the majority of survey respondents across political orientations reported that these policies either made them less likely to want to move to a state or did not affect their desires. Further, state-level political climate, gender, sexual orientation, race, parenthood status, income, and willingness to migrate for work, political climate, or education were related to migration attitudes. Findings suggest that states enacting these policies could experience economic effects due to a decline in migration, particularly for those seeking employment opportunities or pursuits of higher education. In addition, states could see a decline in migration from women and LGBT individuals, and their allies.

In the past two decades, the size of the Korean American population has notably increased. Despite this, there has been little research on the perinatal health of this population. This paper examines which and to what extent maternal risk factors are associated with birth outcomes (prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation [IUGR]) among Korean Americans, particularly focusing on maternal nativity and residential proximity to other Koreans. The authors employ the National Center for Health Statistics Linked Birth/Infant Death Files for 1995–1997, pooled and linked with contextual information obtained from the 2000 Census Summary File 1 for seven selected states. Major findings, based on multinomial logistic regression models, suggest that maternal educational attainments and the status of prenatal care are strong predictors of adverse birth outcomes among this population. Although descriptive analysis indicates an elevated risk of adverse birth among U.S.-born Korean women, compared to their foreign-born counterparts, the control of prenatal care eliminates the effect of maternal nativity. Social proximity to co-ethnics, measured by the population size of Koreans in counties, has little influence on birth outcomes among Korean Americans.

Children comprise a significant share of immigrants around the world, yet scholarship has largely treated children as adult-like or adult-following actors in migration. We explore how the early life course and parents’ migration structured children’s migration from Mexico to the USA from 2002 to 2005, using the Mexican Family Life Survey, national survey data from Mexico that tracked 854 migrants, including 375 children, to the USA. We find that while parents’ migration decisions matter at all ages, young children who migrate are nearly always accompanied by their parents, whereas the minority of adolescents are. Primary school-aged children and accompanied adolescents migrate in response to community violence and barriers to education, suggesting that their migration reflects concerns about where it is best to raise children. Adolescents who migrate without their parents do so in response to economic factors, much like adults; however, adolescents also respond to youth community migration prevalence, suggesting that youth-specific norms of migration frame their decision-making. The results show how the early life course structures three distinct profiles of child migration: complete dependents, children whose location choices reflect concerns about schools and safety, and near independents. More generally, the determinants and process of migration shift as parental oversight declines and social structures beyond the family—community violence, access to education, youth norms, gender, and labor markets—emerge as important.

Skills shortages in the developed world are being addressed through selective immigration programs. Immigrant skills wastage signifies costly inefficiencies at both the micro and macro level. In addition to impacts on individual’s job satisfaction, work effort, and wellbeing, skills wastage reduces the intended productivity gain from highly skilled immigrants. This study examines the mismatch between immigrants’ education and the occupations they attain in Australia. Using a sample of 73,649 females and 120,602 males from the 2016 Australian census, we extend the Realized Matches method of measuring over-education, disaggregating over-education into “moderate over-education” and “severe over-education.” Multinomial logistic regression results show that the likelihood of severe over-education is considerably higher for Asian immigrants, and most of all the China-born, Indonesia-born, and India-born, than the Australia-born, and is also higher than for immigrants born in other countries, even after controlling for a range of other characteristics. Almost all overseas birthplace groups are also significantly more likely to be moderately over-educated than the Australia-born, especially those groups in which higher percentages gained permanent residence through skilled migration. The results highlight the heterogeneity of immigrant education–occupation mismatches and demonstrate that the real extent of immigrant over-education may have been disguised in previous studies by assuming that all incidences of over-education are equally consequential. In view of the considerable skills wastage indicated by the severe over-education of the Asia-born, the selection criteria by which skilled immigrants are admitted may need rethinking.

Using the 2000 wave of Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS3), this study attempts to further complement studies that seek to analyze the relationship between migration and prenatal care utilization in Indonesia. The major conclusion from the multilevel logistic regression suggests that migrants are less likely than non-migrants to seek prenatal care in a public or private hospital but are more likely than non-migrants to initiate prenatal care in their first trimester and to receive four or more prenatal visits. Several measures of child, woman, household and community characteristics are also significant predictors of the location, timing and frequency of prenatal care. It is evident that the design of effective and efficient policies requires a more comprehensive knowledge of the determinants of migration and maternal healthcare services utilization. The assessment of whether the extent of the location, timing and frequency of prenatal care differs between migrants and non-migrants would have important policy implications for both individuals and society at large.

The term “gentrification” carries conflicting popular connotations, conjuring images of both revitalization and displacement. Despite a rich critical literature from urban social scientists, gentrification as it relates to rural housing and rural development is a similarly conflicted term. With the frequent conflation of rural gentrification and economic improvement, researchers and policy-makers alike need more nuanced techniques for identifying how the process distributes costs and benefits across households. This paper operationalizes rural gentrification as a specific demographic pattern of household migration, termed the “Rural Gentrification Score,” and maps its footprint between 1980 and 2000 in 25 US states. It then uses census data to better understand the impacts of rural gentrification on home values in rural counties, interrogating the popular notion that homeowners benefit from gentrification. Using comparative analyses, two related hypotheses about rural gentrification and inequality are explored: (1) that gentrified rural counties were susceptible to greater home value segregation and (2) that over time gentrification’s spread culminated in greater homogeneity of home values. Results support each of these hypotheses and point to nuances in the relationship between population turnover, inequality, and socioeconomic context. Most notably the findings highlight a spatial and temporal pattern of widening wealth inequality in gentrifying rural counties.

Most studies of union formation focus on short-term probabilities of marrying, cohabiting, or divorcing in the next year. In this study, we take a long-term perspective by considering joint probabilities of marrying or cohabiting by certain ages and maintaining the unions for at least 8, 12, or even 24 years. We use data for female respondents in the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate choice models for multiple stages of the union-forming process. We then use the estimated parameters to simulate each woman’s sequence of union transitions from ages 18–46, and use the simulated outcomes to predict probabilities that women with given characteristics follow a variety of long-term paths. We find that a typical, 18 year-old woman with no prior unions has a 22 % chance of cohabiting or marrying within 4 years and maintaining the union for 12+ years; this predicted probability remains steady until the woman nears age 30, when it falls to 17 %. We also find that unions entered via cohabitation contribute significantly to the likelihood of experiencing a long-term union, and that this contribution grows with age and (with age held constant) as women move from first to second unions. This finding reflects the fact that the high probability of entering a cohabiting union more than offsets the relatively low probability of maintaining it for the long-term. Third, the likelihood of forming a union and maintaining it for the long-term is highly sensitive to race, but is largely invariant to factors that can be manipulated by public policy such as divorce laws, welfare benefits, and income tax laws.