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A large body of research has found an association between short birth intervals and the risk of infant mortality in developing countries, but recent work on other perinatal outcomes from highly developed countries has called these claims into question, arguing that previous studies have failed to adequately control for unobserved heterogeneity. Our study addresses this issue by estimating within-family models on a sample of 4.5 million births from 77 countries at various levels of development. We show that after unobserved maternal heterogeneity is controlled for, intervals shorter than 36 months substantially increase the probability of infant death. However, the importance of birth intervals as a determinant of infant mortality varies inversely with maternal education and the strength of the relationship varies regionally. Finally, we demonstrate that the mortality-reducing effects of longer birth intervals are strong at low levels of development but decline steadily toward zero at higher levels of development. These findings offer a clear way to reconcile previous research showing that birth intervals are important for perinatal outcomes in lowincome countries but are much less consequential in high-income settings.

Background: The decline of child mortality during the late 19th century is one of the most significant demographic changes in human history. However, there is evidence suggesting that the substantial reductions in mortality during the era did little to reduce mortality inequality between socioeconomic groups. Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the development of socioeconomic inequalities in cause-specific infant and child mortality during Stockholm's demographic transition. Methods: Using an individual-level longitudinal population register for Stockholm, Sweden, between 1878 and 1926, I estimate Cox proportional hazards models to study how inequality in cause-specific hazards of dying from six categories of causes varied over time. The categories included are 1) airborne and 2) food and waterborne infectious diseases, 3) other infectious diseases, 4) noninfectious diseases and accidents, 5) perinatal causes, and 6) unspecified causes. Results: The results show that class differentials in nearly all causes of death converged during the demographic transition. The only exception was the airborne infectious disease category, for which the gap between white-collar and unskilled blue-collar workers widened over time. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that, even in a context of falling mortality and a changing epidemiological environment, higher socioeconomic groups were able to maintain a health advantage for their children by reducing their risks of dying from airborne disease to a greater extent than other groups. Potential explanations for these patterns are suggested, as well as suggestions for future research. Contribution: This is the first paper to use individual-level cause-of-death data to study the long-term trends in inequality of cause-specific child mortality during the demographic transition.

The Coronavirus outbreak allows for a number of possible applications to classroom teaching (biology, computer science, Earth science, physics, statistics), as well as student research. A number of simple models reproduce fairly well the case numbers (total confirmed cases) of the Coronavirus pandemic in specific regions. These models may also be used to predict future cases and can be updated as data become available in a region (city, state, country).

Fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa has been slower than in other regions, with the periods of extremely slow transitions frequently described as stalled. Lack of investment in family planning programs has been proposed as a key contributing factor. However, while there is a large literature on fertility transition stalls, similar phenomena in contraceptive prevalence trends have received less attention. We propose a probabilistic method for detecting plateaus in modern contraceptive prevalence (MCP) and in demand for family planning satisfied by modern methods (DS). We defined a contraceptive prevalence plateau in terms of level, rate, and probability conditions, each with associated thresholds for a plateau to be identified. We used probabilistic annual model-based estimates of family planning indicators and a simple smoothing approach to produce annual estimates of plateau probabilities under a variety of thresholds. We applied our method to 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1980-2019 and found plateaus in MCP in ten countries (half in western Africa) and plateaus in DS

CONTEXT Breast‐feeding rates and durations have been increasing among U.S. women in recent decades. As a result, women may be more likely to practice breast‐feeding during pregnancy (BDP), which has been hypothesized to increase the risk of miscarriage, yet there has been little research into the issue. METHODS Data on 10,661 pregnancies from several waves of the National Survey of Family Growth, covering the years 2002–2015, were used to calculate unadjusted miscarriage rates according to BDP status. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards models were employed to investigate the association between BDP and the risk of miscarriage. RESULTS BDP was practiced for 6% of the total time at risk of miscarriage. The miscarriage rate was higher when mothers exclusively breast‐fed during pregnancy (35%) than when they practiced either complementary BDP (i.e., the child also consumed other food) or did not breast‐feed (14% and 15%, respectively). After adjustment for maternal and pregnancy characteristics, the risk of miscarriage was greater when mothers exclusively breast‐fed than when mothers did not breast‐feed (hazard ratio, 3.9), but no increased risk was found with complementary BDP. The miscarriage risk during exclusive BDP was similar to that for women who conceived when they were 40 or older (3.2). CONCLUSIONS Exclusive BDP is associated with an elevated risk of miscarriage, but it remains unclear whether and how the practice is associated with health outcomes for the mother and breast‐fed child. Research is needed to further explore these outcomes to inform recommendations regarding BDP.

The timings of historical fertility transitions in different regions are well understood by demographers, but much less is known regarding their specific features and causes. In the study reported in this paper, we used longitudinal micro-level data for five local populations in Europe and North America to analyse the relationship between socio-economic status and fertility during the fertility transition. Using comparable analytical models and class schemes for each population, we examined the changing socio-economic differences in marital fertility and related these to common theories on fertility behaviour. Our results do not provide support for the hypothesis of universally high fertility among the upper classes in pre-transitional society, but do support the idea that the upper classes acted as forerunners by reducing their fertility before other groups. Farmers and unskilled workers were the latest to start limiting their fertility. Apart from these similarities, patterns of class differences in fertility varied significantly between populations.

A negative association between birth interval length and infant and child mortality has been consistently identified in modern developing countries. The reasons for this association are unclear, however. Leading hypotheses linking interval length to mortality fall into four broad categories—sibling competition, maternal depletion, infection transmission, or unobserved maternal factors—but none has received overwhelming support. Using data from Stockholm between 1878 and 1926, this study identifies trends in the relationship over time, controlling for unobserved maternal heterogeneity, and exploiting sibling deaths to better understand the mechanisms at work. Results show that the association disappeared over time as infectious disease mortality fell and that deaths of previous siblings during the postnatal period disproportionately tended to increase the risk of dying among index children born after short intervals. These findings strongly suggest the relationship is related to the transmission of disease between closely spaced siblings.

The negative relationship between birth interval length and neonatal mortality risks is well documented, but heterogeneity in this relationship has been largely ignored. Using the Bangladesh Maternal Mortality and Health Care Survey 2010, this study investigates how the effect of birth interval length on neonatal mortality risks varies by maternal age at birth and maternal education. There is significant variation in the effect of interval length on neonatal mortality along these dimensions. Young mothers and those with little education, both of which make up a large share of the Bangladeshi population, can disproportionately benefit from longer intervals. Because these results were obtained from within-family models, they are not due to unobservable heterogeneity between mothers. Targeting women with these characteristics may lead to significant improvements in neonatal mortality rates, but there are significant challenges in reaching them.

This work combines economic and demographic data to examine inequality of living standards in Stockholm at the turn of the twentieth century. Using a longitudinal population register with occupational information, we utilize event-history models to show that despite absolute decreases in mortality, relative differences between socioeconomic groups remained virtually constant. The results also show that child mortality continued to be sensitive to short-term fluctuations in wages and that there were no socioeconomic differences in this response. We argue that the persistent inequality in living standards was possibly due to differences in residential patterns and nutrition.

The western fertility decline is arguably the most significant demographic change to have occurred in the past 200 years, yet its causes and processes are still shrouded in ambiguity due to a lack of individual-level longitudinal data. A growing body of research has helped improve our understanding of the decline's causes by examining the development of socioeconomic differences in fertility using historical micro-data, but these have largely only considered rural areas where fertility was generally slower to decline. This article contributes to the literature by utilizing individual-level data from the Roteman Database for Stockholm, Sweden between 1878 and 1926 to examine the association of socioeconomic status and fertility and the adoption of stopping behaviour during the city's transition. Using piecewise constant hazard models and logistic regression, we find that a clear class pattern arises in which the elite were early practitioners of fertility control, followed by the working classes. As the transition unfolded, socioeconomic differences in stopping behaviour disappeared and overall fertility differentials were also minimized, both of them being consistent with patterns observed in rural populations. The implications of these findings for major explanations of the decline are discussed in the concluding section.