Suchergebnisse

The extended family has been recognized as a major safety net for orphans in sub‐Saharan Africa. However, the mortality crisis associated with HIV/AIDS may drastically reduce the availability of relatives and thus undermine traditional forms of mutual support. In this article, the microsimulator SOCSIM is used to estimate and project quantities such as the number of living uncles, aunts, siblings, and grandparents available to orphans. The model is calibrated to the setting of Zimbabwe, using data from demographic and Health Surveys and estimates and projections of demographic rates from the United Nations. The article shows that there is a lag of more than ten years between the peak in orphanhood prevalence and the peak in scarcity of grandparents for orphans. The results indicate that a generalized HIV/AIDS epidemic has a prolonged impact on children and orphans that extends well beyond the peak in mortality. A rapid increase in the number of orphans is followed by a steady reduction in the number of living grandparents for orphans. Consequently, the burden of double orphans (both of whose parents have died) is likely to shift to uncles and aunts. In Zimbabwe, the number of living uncles and aunts per double orphan decreased between 1980 and 2010, but it is expected to increase progressively during the next few decades. Changes in kinship structure have important social consequences that should be taken into account when seeking to address the lack of care for orphans.

Non‐monetary transfers of time represent a largely unknown, yet pivotal component, of the support system in the United States. We map flows of time transfers, by age and sex, related to informal childcare and adult care in the US. We develop methods to estimate intra‐ and inter‐household time transfers using data from the American Time Use Survey (2011–2013). We summarize the results in matrices of time flows by age and sex for the general US population, as well as for the "sandwich generation." Most time transfers flow downwards from parents to young children, with relevant gender differences. The time produced by the sandwich generation is directed toward a more diverse population spectrum, including substantial intra‐generational transfers to spouses. Extrapolations based on our findings reveal a projected rise in demand, relative to supply, of informal care, indicating that, to maintain current levels of care, US society will have to rely more heavily either on the market or on an increased effort of caregivers.

Abstract
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Organization for Migration has postulated that international migrant stocks fell short of their pre-pandemic projections by nearly 2 million as a result of travel restrictions. However, this decline is not testable with migration data from traditional sources. Key migration stakeholders have called for using data from alternative sources, including social media, to fill these gaps. Building on previous work using social media data to analyze migration responses to external shocks, we test the hypothesis that COVID-related travel restrictions reduced migrant stock relative to expected migration without such restrictions using estimates of migrants drawn from Facebook's advertising platform and dynamic panel models. We focus on four key origin countries in North and West Africa (Côte d'Ivoire, Algeria, Morocco, and Senegal) and on their 23 key destination countries. Between February and June 2020, we estimate that a destination country implementing a month-long total entry ban on arrivals from Côte d'Ivoire, Algeria, Morocco, or Senegal might have expected a 3.39% reduction in migrant stock from the restricted country compared with the counterfactual in which no travel restrictions were implemented. However, when broader societal disruptions of the pandemic are accounted for, we estimate that countries implementing travel restrictions might paradoxically have expected an increase in migrant stock. In this context, travel restrictions do not appear to have effectively curbed migration and could have resulted in outcomes opposite their intended effects.

AbstractOne of the strongest empirical regularities in spatial demography is that flows of migrants are positively associated with population stocks at origin and destination and are inversely related to distance. This pattern was formalized into what are known as gravity models of migration. Traditionally, distance is measured geographically, but other measures of distance, such as cultural distance, are also relevant in explaining migration flows. However, measures of cultural distance are not widely adopted in the literature on modeling migration flows, partially because of the difficulties associated with operationalizing and producing these measures across space and time. In this paper, we use a scalable approach to obtain proxies for measuring cultural similarity between countries by using Facebook data and illustrate the impact of incorporating these measures, based on food and drink interests, into gravity models for predicting migration. Our results show that, despite their limitations, the new measures of cultural similarity derived from Facebook data improve the prediction power of traditional gravity models and have a predictive capacity comparable to that of classic variables used in the literature, such as shared language and history. The results open up new opportunities for understanding the determinants of migration and for predicting migration when considering broader and complementary perspectives on the meaning and measurement of distance.

AbstractGenerational overlap affects the care time demands on parents and grandparents worldwide. Here, we present the first global estimates of the experience of simultaneously having frail older parents and young children ("sandwichness") or young grandchildren ("grandsandwichness") for the 1970–2040 cohorts, using demographic methods and microsimulations. We find that sandwichness is more prevalent in the Global South—for example, almost twice as prevalent in sub‐Saharan Africa as it is in Europe for the 1970 cohort—but is expected to decline globally by one‐third between 1970 and 2040. The Global North might have reached a peak in the simultaneous care time demands from multiple generations but the duration of the grandsandwich state will increase by up to one year in Africa and Asia. This increasing generational overlap implies more care time demands over the entire adult life course, but also opens up an opportunity for the full potential of grandparenthood to materialize.

This comparative study of European time transfers reveals the full extent of transfers in the form of unpaid work and highlights the existence of important gender differences in household time production. A large quantity of goods and services are produced by household members for their own consumption, without involving market transactions. Despite the economic and social importance of unpaid work, these productive activities are largely invisible to traditional national economic accounts. As a consequence, standard measures of intergenerational transfers typically ignore household production, and thus underestimate the overall value of goods and services produced over the life cycle; in particular, the economic contribution of females. The book uses a life course approach to offer policy-relevant insights into the effect of demographic and social change on intergenerational ties and gender inequality in household production

Population aging is an inevitable global demographic process. Most of the literature on the consequences of demographic change focuses on the economic and societal challenges that we will face as people live longer and have fewer children. In this paper, we (a) briefly describe key trends and projections of the magnitude and speed of population aging; (b) discuss the economic, social, and environmental consequences of population aging; and (c) investigate some of the opportunities that aging societies create. We use Germany as a case study. However, the general insights that we obtain can be generalized to other developed countries. We argue that there may be positive unintended side effects of population aging that can be leveraged to address pressing environmental problems and issues of gender inequality and intergenerational ties.

Digital trace data presents an opportunity for promptly monitoring shifts in migrant populations. This contribution aims to determine whether the number of European migrants in the United Kingdom (UK) declined between March 2019 and March 2020, using weekly estimates derived from the Facebook Advertising Platform. The collected data is disaggregated according to age, level of education, and country of origin. To examine the fluctuation in the number of migrants, a simple Bayesian trend model is employed, incorporating indicator variables for age, education, and country. The Facebook data indicates a downward trend in the number of European migrants residing in the UK. This result is further confirmed by the data from the Labour Force Survey. Notably, the outcomes reveal that in the run-up to Brexit, the most significant decline occurred among the age group of 20 to 29 years old – the largest migrant group – and the tertiary educated. This analyses could not be implemented with traditional data sources such as the Labour Force Survey, because this level of disaggregation is not provided. However, there are also important limitations associated with digital trace data, such as algorithm changes and representativeness. These limitations need to be addressed by employing sound statistical methodologies. Nevertheless, this research shows the potential of digital trace data in anticipating migration trends at a timely granularity and informing policymakers.