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Publications (33)
In the context of a couples cohort established to evaluate an optimised couples-focused behavioural intervention in rural South Africa, we examined: (1) Is couples' relationship quality (RQ) associated with couples HIV testing and counselling (CHTC) uptake? (2) Does CHTC uptake or the intervention components uptake improve subsequent RQ? Enrolled c...
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. Usin...
The Oxford International Handbook of Family Policy has two main aims: to identify key developments globally in regard to the forms and modalities of relevant policies, and to take a critical look at the developments regarding those policies. The overall goal is to uncover the extent to which concerns about the family and the role and practices of p...
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 eithe...
Religion has historically been a pronatalist force, but because it fosters traditional gender role attitudes, its importance for fertility has the potential to wane if gender equality is emerging as the new natalism. We used World Values Survey (WVS) data from 1989 to 2020 to determine whether the religious fertility advantage has changed over the...
Background
The research literature finds a positive relationship between couple religiosity and relationship quality, but because public discourse highlights religious victims of domestic violence, we questioned whether couple religiosity prevents negative relationship outcomes as well as it promotes positive ones.PurposeThis article compares rates...
Religion has historically been a pronatalist force, but because it fosters traditional gender role attitudes, its importance for fertility may wane where gender equity is thought to be emerging as the new natalism. In this study, I used World Values Survey and European Values Survey data from 1989 to 2018 to determine whether more religious Norther...
The aim of this article is to understand the link between family relationships and internet abuse (IA) using a sample of 18,709 children in 25 European countries. Our results suggest that family relationships are a significant predictor of IA-even when controlling for other significant individual and country-level factors. According to our results,...
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 id...
Recent work on gender differences in academic performance in wealthy countries highlights the importance of family structure: Boys’ education suffers more than girls’ education does when biological fathers are absent. We explored whether high rates of father absence in Latin America and the Caribbean might help explain why girls in the region have...
We used data from Demographic and Health Surveys and the Mexican Family Life Survey to test how children’s living arrangements were related to their progress through school in countries comprising three-quarters of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our results indicated that family instability presents a challenge for educational p...
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’...
Improving children’s health in lower-income countries around the globe is one of the paramount concerns of the
international community. Research on this topic has focused on the role of financial resources, women’s education, and
public health interventions, largely overlooking the ways in which family structure, and union instability in particular...
The Sustainable Demographic Dividend contends that the long-term fortunes of the modern economy rise and fall with the family. The report focuses on the key roles marriage and fertility play in sustaining long-term economic growth, the viability of the welfare state, the size and quality of the workforce, and the profitability of large sectors of t...
Literature on the effect of decision-making patterns on contraceptive use often does not (1) distinguish between women participating
in decisions and controlling them, and (2) account for effects of common decision-making patterns within the community. In
Uganda where high fertility persists, both of these factors may be relevant to adoption of con...
In many sub-Saharan African countries, young women face decreasing educational opportunities, age asymmetries between sexual partners, and high prevalence of HIV infection. This study draws upon data from the 2002 Cameroon Adolescent Reproductive Health Survey to analyze the determinants of young women's perceived ability to refuse sex in urban Cam...
Women in monogamous unions enjoyed more reproductive control than their polygynous counterparts prior to the onset of Ghana's fertility transition. However, as the transition progressed, men's relative influence grew, and it grew more in monogamous marriages than in polgynous ones. As men select into monogamy on the basis of lower (but not low) fer...
Breastfeeding increased in Ghana during 1988-98 despite women's increased participation in the paid labor force. The modern health care sector seems to have been successfully promoting breastfeeding even over a period when other forces of modernization could have depressed breastfeeding. Full breastfeeding significantly increased in urban areas. Ch...
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 rela...
The Demography of South Africa is a valuable reference book because it provides insights regarding quality of demographic data from censuses and vital registration at various points in South Africa's history. The stated purpose for the volume is "to outline the demographic contours of South Africa," but as part of providing this general demography...
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 t...
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...
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 setti...
Ghanaian fertility decline may not be associated with women's having greater control over reproduction. Focus groups of young Ghanaian men and women indicate that attitudes supporting men's dominance in fertility decisions characterize even the highly educated. Young women with high fertility desires anticipate being able to stop childbearing when...
We use focus groups of adolescents and young adults in urban Ghana to explore both fertility preferences and expectations about the ability to implement these preferences. The attitudes expressed in groups from a range of educational institutions do not support some common assumptions regarding pathways through which women's schooling affects ferti...
The literature on gender differentials in nutrition demonstrates that the calorie intake of females is generally as adequate as that of males at all ages. Female disadvantage in micronutrient intake is, however, frequent. Pregnant and lactating women are disadvantaged relative to both men and other women. In South Asia there is evidence that boys a...
Since the mid-1980s or earlier, several East African countries have experienced constant or rising child mortality rates concurrent with social and biomedical improvements of the “Child Survival Revolution”. This study examines whether preventive primary health care enhanced early child survival in the late 1980s and early 1990s in five East Africa...
Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-230). Vita. Photocopy.