Population Center Working Papers (PSC/PARC)
The Population Center Working Papers (PSC/PARC) series contains papers by researchers at the PSC/PARC. It serves as an outlet for pre-prints, for papers under journal review, and for background papers (e.g., for technical materials for which journals lack space) written by PSC/PARC Research Associates. The series also publishes submissions from students affiliated with Research Associates at the PSC/PARC with Research Associate sponsorship. The PSC/PARC series combines works previously published in the Population Studies Center Working Paper Series and the Population Aging Research Center Working Paper Series and also includes papers from the Penn Education and Inequality Working Papers Series. Papers can be submitted by emailing: psc-library@pop.upenn.edu.
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Publication Dynamic Family Size Preferences during the COVID-19 Mortality Crisis(2025-03-21) Marteleto, Letícia J.; Kumar, SnehaIn this note, we examine how family size preferences evolved for women with and without children in response to changing COVID-19 mortality exposure during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We leverage spatiotemporal variation in COVID-19 deaths occurring during panel surveys in 2020 and 2021 with a population-based sample of 2,520 women, ages 18–34, across 94 municipalities in Pernambuco, Brazil. We use individual fixed-effects regressions to examine whether changes in municipality-level COVID-19 death rates are associated with changes in women’s desired family size, net of own/family COVID-19 infection status and other time-varying sociodemographic factors. We find that women with and without children at baseline respond differently to changing municipality-level COVID-19 deaths—while women without children do not change their desired family size, women with children see a small but significant increase in their desired family size in response to rising COVID-19 mortality. These innovative findings suggest that women with children responded to widespread COVID-19-related loss within their communities by wanting to build and consolidate their families. We advance knowledge about varying contextual influences on fertility preferences during epidemics in a middle-income country with young and below-replacement fertility.Publication Floods, Community Infrastructure, and Children's Heterogeneous Learning Losses in Rural India(2025-02-03) Hannum, Emily; Khalid, Nazar; Behrman, Jere R.; Thapa, AmritIndia has the world’s largest number of school-aged children. The majority live in rural areas, many of which are highly flood-prone. Previous studies document that in such areas, floods are associated with lower enrollments, attendance, and learning, in some cases with differentiation by gender, caste/religion, and family SES. Previous literature suggests that components of community infrastructure have positive associations with children’s learning. However, previous literature has not addressed whether better community physical and social infrastructures are associated with (1) smaller flood-related learning losses on average, (2) different learning for marginalized versus other children in the absence of floods, and (3) different vulnerabilities to floods for marginalized versus other children. This paper finds that (1) most aspects of community physical and social infrastructure are not associated with lower flood-related learning losses on average, but proximity to towns and several components of social infrastructure are associated with lower flood-related learning losses on average, (2) community physical and social infrastructure components have heterogeneous associations, in some cases increasing, in most cases not affecting, and in other cases reducing disparities in learning between marginalized and other children in the absence of floods, and (3) community physical and social infrastructure components have heterogeneous effects, in some cases increasing, in most cases not affecting, and in other cases reducing disparities in learning between marginalized and other children in the presence of floods.Publication Intergenerational Mobility in Depression and Anxiety in India(2025-03-06) Hervé, Justine; Mani, Subha; Behrman, Jere R.; Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Nandi, ArindamThis paper is the first to provide estimates of intergenerational associations in mental health for a low- and middle-income country. Using rich mental health data on ∼4,000 parent-child pairs in India, we find intergenerational associations in depression and anxiety scores to be 0.61 and 0.68, respectively, suggesting low mobility in mental health. However, once we allow for the mobility estimates to vary along the distribution of parental mental health, we find notable heterogeneity- while minimal symptoms of anxiety and depression in parents persist into the next generation, children of parents with mild to severe symptoms experience significant improvements in mental health. This upward mobility in mental health is largely driven by high socioeconomic-status households. Importantly, we show that even minimal symptoms have significant economic implications for both children and adults. Our findings suggest that programs that improve mental health in one generation can also facilitate intergenerational mobility in mental health and related outcomes.Publication Alcohol Use, Genetics, and Cognitive Decline(2024-10-01) Ho, Pei-ChuanAlcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is a major public health issue in the U.S., affecting 14.5 million people aged 12 and older in 2019, though only 7.2% sought treatment. AUD is linked to cognitive decline and dementia, placing a significant burden on individuals, families, and society. Both alcohol consumption and cognitive decline are often influenced by unobserved factors such as genetics and personality, raising concerns about endogeneity. To address the endogeneity stemmed from genetics, we used Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data to study alcohol consumption in individuals aged 50 and by taking advantage of the availability of both alcohol consumption behavior data and genetic information. By using polygenic scores (PGS), which summarize the genetic predisposition of alcohol consumption, we found some evidence of positive correlation between alcohol consumption and cognitive decline: heavy alcohol consumption was associated with worse cognitive status. Though it is still difficult to claim causal relationship between alcohol consumption and cognitive decline due to the complexity of unobserved characteristics related to both, our approach was able to alleviate endogeneity stemmed from genetics.Publication Understanding the Dynamic Process of Older Adult Behavior Changes for Disaster Preparedness: An Application of the Integrated Transtheoretical Model with Social Cognitive Theory and Protection Motivation Theory(2024-09-30) Ma, Chenyi; Culhane, Dennis; Bachman, Sara S.Integrating the Transtheoretical Model with Social Cognitive Theory and Protection Motivation Theory, we propose a new model to study the progress of behavior changes towards disaster preparedness along three developmental stages: from “not prepared” (NP), to “intention to prepare” (IP), to “already prepared” (AP). Using the 2021 National Household Survey data (FEMA, N = 6,180), we tested this model by employing a series of nested weighted generalized ordered logistic regressions. We found that, although Hispanics have a larger prevalence of IP than their non-Hispanic white counterparts, they are less likely to move to the AP stage. The observed ethnicdisparity is largely due to the disparities in actual behavioral capabilities in essential knowledge and access to resources between the two groups. Personal disaster experience, social/observational learning, self-efficacy, and risk perception each facilitate behavior changes from the NP to IP or AP stage (i.e., departure from NP stage) and from NP or IP stage to AP stage (i.e., arrival at AP stage). Although income does not necessarily influence one’s decision to depart from the NP stage, it determines one’s arrival at the AP stage. Increasing one’s income further boosts the realization of AP for people with high-risk perceptions. However, for people with moderate or low levels of risk perceptions, increased income did not lead to arrival at the AP stage. Additional research is needed to more fully apply this processoriented approach with new measurement introduced in this paper to study the behavior changes among subpopulations in exposure to specific hazards.Publication U.S. Long-term Care Infrastructure and Co-resident Kin Living Arrangements among Older Adults(2024-09-23) Parrish, Elise M.Population aging and the retraction of the long term care infrastructure likely have important consequences for the care and living arrangements of older adults and their families, but this is relatively unexplored. Advancing a political economy of long-term care (LTC) approach, this study considers whether, how, and for whom, variation in state and local LTC infrastructure is consequential for older adults’ co-resident kin living arrangements. I construct a novel dataset merging eight years (2012–2019) of individual-level data from the American Community Survey (N=4,170,768), state Medicaid LTC expenditure data, and county-level nursing home data. Descriptive analyses show that low-SES, Black and/or Latinx, and disabled older adults are more likely to live in areas with weaker local care infrastructure. Results from fixed effects models indicate that higher state expenditures on long-term care and higher local availability of nursing home care correspond with decreases in the likelihood that older adults who are disabled, aged 75+, and low-SES will live with an adult child or other non-spousal family member. Taken together, these findings suggest that insufficient long-term care infrastructure environments may coerce family co-resident care and systematically exacerbate existing inequalities by constraining the care options available to structurally vulnerable older adults and their family members.Publication Is the Growing Burden of Non-Communicable Diseases in India Preventable?(2024-06-19) Gaiha, Raghav; Kulkarni, Vani S.; Unnikrishnan, VidhyaNon-Communicable Disease (NCD) morbidity and mortality as shares of total morbidity and mortality have risen steadily in India and projected to surge rapidly. In 1990, NCDs accounted for 40% of all Indian mortality and are now projected to account for three quarters of all deaths by 2030. Currently, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory illness, and diabetes are the leading causes of death in India, accounting for almost 50% of all deaths. Underlying these rising shares are growing risks that are common to several NCDs. NCDs are chronic in nature and take a long time to develop. They are linked to aging and affluence and have replaced infectious diseases and malnutrition as the dominant causes of ill health and death in much of the world including India. Some NCDs cause others and create clusters of co-morbid conditions (e.g., diabetes can lead to kidney failure and blindness). Old-age morbidity is a rapidly worsening curse in India. The swift descent of the elderly in India (60 years +) into non-communicable diseases (e.g., cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes) could have disastrous consequences in terms of impoverishment of families, excess mortality, lowering of investment and deceleration of economic growth. Indeed, the government must deal simultaneously with the rising fiscal burden of NCDs and substantial burden of infectious diseases. The present study seeks to answer three questions: Why has the prevalence of two NCDs, diabetes and heart diseases risen in recent years? Given the surge in these diseases, whether social protection policies and restructuring of medical services can mitigate such surges in the near future? A related but equally important concern is whether lifestyle and dietary changes could be induced to further prevent the rising burden of these NCDs. Our analysis is based on the only all-India panel survey-India Human Development survey that covers 2005 and 2012. This survey was conducted jointly by University of Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. A robust econometric methodology-specifically, 2SLS- is used to address the endogeneity of key explanatory variables. The results here stress the need to make sure that pension and healthcare reforms are accompanied by greater awareness, expansion of old age pensions and public hospitals, and effective regulation of both public and private hospitals. Key words: NCDs, Diabetes, Heart diseases, Old age and other pensions, Hospitals, IndiaPublication Infant Mortality Expectation and Fertility Choice in Rural Malawi(2024-06) Delavande, Adeline; Kohler, Hans-Peter; Vergili, AliFor decades, population research has been interested in the complex relationship between child mortality and fertility, with a key focus on identifying replacement behavior (fertility response to experienced child mortality) and hoarding behavior (fertility response to expected child mortality). Using unique data from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH), we investigate the impact of individual-specific subjective infant mortality expectations on fertility choice. We instrument the potentially endogenous infant mortality expectations with the average of parents’ ratings of children’s health to address a potentially omitted variable bias such as parental taste for health. Consistent with the hoarding mechanism, we find that a 10 percentage point decrease in infant mortality expectations leads to a 14 percentage point decrease in the propensity to have a child in the next 2 years from a baseline propensity of 43%.Publication The Household Equipment Revolution(2024-05-10) Adamopoulou, Effrosyni; Greenwood, Jeremy; Guner, NezihA brief historical overview of the household equipment revolution and the women who transformed the home in Germany and the United States.Publication Food Coma is Real: The Effect of Digestive Fatigue on Adolescents' Cognitive Performance(2024-04-12) Hervé, Justine; Mani, Subha; Behrman, Jere; Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Arindam, NandiFood coma, also known as postprandial somnolence, is a commonly cited reason for experiencing reduced alertness during mid-afternoon worldwide. By using exogenous variation in the timing of tests and, hence, by extension, plausibly exogenous variation in the temporal distance between an individual’s last meal and the time of test, we examine the causal impact of postprandial somnolence on cognitive capacities. Analyzing novel time use data on ∼ 4,600 Indian adolescents and young adults, we find that testing within an hour after a meal reduces test-takers’ scores on English, native language, math, and Raven’s tests by 8, 8, 8, and 16 percent, respectively, compared to test-takers who took the tests more than an hour after their meal. We further find that the negative effect of postprandial somnolence on cognition operates through increased feelings of fatigue and depletion of cognitive resources that become more pronounced while dealing with more challenging test questions.