Luca Maria Pesando

New York University | NYU · Division of Social Science

There is increasing evidence that digital technologies such as mobile phones have the potential to shape some of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as health, education, and nutrition, even among the most resource-deprived countries and communities in the world. Nonetheless, little research has focused on the intergen...

This essay provides a series of reflections on the current state of demography as seen by four early-career researchers who are actively engaged in aspects of the discipline as varied as research, teaching, mentorship, data collection efforts, policy making, and policy advising. Despite some claims that the discipline is weakening, we showcase the...

Child marriage is associated with adverse outcomes related to women's well-being. Many countries have introduced laws banning this practice, and a number of studies have evaluated their impact. Scant research has focused on instances where countries have lowered the legal minimum age at marriage, even though such 'reverse policies' could result in...

Extensive demographic scholarship shows that the population‐level implications of mortality crises such as the COVID‐19 pandemic extend beyond mortality dynamics to affect fertility and family‐formation strategies. Using novel municipality‐level data from Chile covering all births that occurred between January 2017 and December 2021, this study exp...

This study investigates patterns of communication among non-coresident kin in the aftermath of a crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic – focusing on a representative sample of New York City residents from the Poverty Tracker survey. Over half of New Yorkers spoke to their non-coresident family members several times a week during the pandemic and nearly ha...

Most social phenomena are inherently complex and hard to measure, often due to under-reporting, stigma, social desirability bias, and rapidly changing external circumstances. This is for instance the case of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), a highly-prevalent social phenomenon which has drastically risen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This p...

Leading theories on parenting in the United States suggest that parenting styles vary widely by socioeconomic status, with middle-class parents practicing "concerted cultivation"—marked by parents’ intensive efforts to foster their children’s development—and working-class parents engaging in the "accomplishment of natural growth"—with children give...

Child marriage is associated with adverse outcomes related to women’s wellbeing. To curb child marriage, many countries introduced laws that ban child marriage, and a growing number of studies evaluated their impact. Scant research focused on instances where countries lowered the legal minimum age at marriage, even though such “reverse policies” co...

Studies on global changes in families have greatly increased over the past decade, adopting both a country-specific and, more recently, a cross-national comparative perspective. While most studies are focused on the drivers of global changes in families, little comparative research has explored the implications of family processes for the health an...

This study explores the relationship between parental educational similarity—educational concordance (homogamy) or discordance (heterogamy)—and children’s health outcomes. Its contribution is threefold. First and foremost, I use longitudinal data on children’s health outcomes tracking children from age 1 to 15, thus being able to assess whether the...

This study explores the relationship between technology adoption and attitudes towards gender equality in political representation by relying on diffusion theories coupled with frameworks of ideational change, social interaction, and world society. We examine whether the use of mobile phones shapes gender attitudes towards women’s participation in...

Using 254 Demographic and Health Surveys from 75 low- and middle-income countries, this study shows how the joint examination of family characteristics across rural and urban areas provides new insights for understanding global family change. We operationalise this approach by building family configurations: a set of interrelated features that desc...

This study explores the relationship between technology adoption and attitudes toward gender equality in political representation by relying on diffusion theories coupled with frameworks of ideational change, social interaction, and world society. We examine whether the use of mobile phones shapes gender attitudes toward women’s participation in po...

This study expands existing scholarship on the relationship between parental educational similarity and infant health using rich administrative data from Chile covering births that occurred between 1990 and 2015. We test the relationship between parental educational similarity (homogamy) or dissimilarity (heterogamy) and two measures of infant heal...

Mobile phones are an invaluable economic asset for low-income individuals and an important tool for strengthening social ties. Mobile phones may also help women overcome physical boundaries, especially in places where they are separated from support networks and are bound within their husbands’ social spheres. Using micro-level data on women and me...

This study adopts a cohort perspective to explore trends in child marriage – defined as the proportion of girls who entered first union before the age of 18 – and the effectiveness of policy changes aimed at curbing child marriage by increasing the minimum legal age of marriage. We adopt a cross-national perspective comparing six low- and middle-in...

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is undergoing rapid transformations in the realm of union formation in tandem with significant educational expansion and rising labor force participation rates. Concurrently, the region remains the least developed and most unequal along multiple dimensions of human and social development. In spite of this unique scenario, n...

Despite the volume of studies leveraging big data to explore socio-demographic phenomena, we still know little about the intersection of digital information and the social problem of intimate partner violence (IPV). This is an important knowledge gap, as IPV remains a pressing public-health concern worldwide, with 35% of women having experienced it...

The Internet has revolutionized our economies, societies, and everyday lives. Many social phenomena are no longer the same as they were in the pre‐Internet era: they have been “Internetized.” We define the Internetization of international migration, and we investigate it by exploring the links between the Internet and migration outcomes all along t...

Objective This article discusses how kinship is construed and enacted in diverse forms of the family that are now part of the culturally pluralistic family system of Western societies. Background This study is the second in a pair documenting changes over the past century in the meaning and practice of kinship in the family system of Western socie...

This study explores the extent to which changes in age-at-marriage laws are effective in curbing early marriage and, if so, whether delays in age at marriage brought about by legal changes increase women’s likelihood to participate in higher education. To answer these questions, we combine individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys (...

This study investigates whether young people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have experienced processes of de-standardization of the life course similar to those observed in high-income societies. We provide two contributions to the relevant literature. First, we use data from 263 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 69 LMICs, of...

For billions of people across the globe, mobile phones enable relatively cheap and effective communication, as well as access to information and vital services on health, education, society, and the economy. Drawing on context-specific evidence on the effects of the digital revolution, this study provides empirical support for the idea that mobile...

Low-cost private schools are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa and are often perceived by parents to be of better quality than public schools. This article assesses the interplay between kindergarten (or preschool) choice, household resources, and children’s school readiness in Ghana. We examine how child, household, and school characteristics pr...

We show that the joint examination of family indicators offers new insights to understand family change across low- and middle-income countries. We operationalize this idea through the concept of family configuration. A family configuration is a confluence of interrelated conditions under which individuals form families. We measure family configura...

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of William J. Goode’s contribution to the study of global family and social change. I begin by describing Goode’s theoretical perspectives and outlining his theses dating back to the 1960s. I then provide an assessment of where and why some of his predictions proved wrong and elaborate on what we have le...

Using data from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Italy, this paper investigates whether financial literacy skills play a role in shaping the value that high school students place on schooling. I hypothesize that higher financial literacy may foster students’ awareness of the financial and non-financial benefits of...

Using data from the “Young Lives” study of childhood poverty tracking a cohort of children from the ages of 8 to 19, this paper aims to investigate the household determinants of teen marriage and teen pregnancy in four low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), namely Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. Its contribution is twofold. First, we offer a...

This paper provides a broad empirical overview of the relationship between family change and socio-economic development drawing on 30+ years of Demographic and Health Survey data from 3.5 million respondents across 84 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We conduct two sets of analyses. First, we document global and regional-level associations...

Childless individuals are often depicted as ‘selfish’ as they opt out of raising children in favour of investing resources in themselves. Yet no research has investigated whether this claim holds in domains of social life such as intergenerational family support. Using data from the Generations and Gender Survey for 11 European countries, this arti...

Over the past half century, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have undergone profound transformations in the realm of the family, accompanied by shifts in gender norms and practices, and dramatic increases in schooling. Rising educational attainment has in turn been a by-product of micro-level behavioral changes on the part of families, alon...

In the absence of well-functioning public transfer systems and safety nets, the family acts as the key provider of income and support through the intergenerational redistribution of resources. In this paper we use micro-level longitudinal data and a mix of methodologies to document the lifecycle patterns of financial transfers in a rural, sub-Sahar...