Hard times and falling fertility in the United States

The text and figures of this short paper are below, and it's also available as a PDF on SocArXiv, in more citable form. The Stata code and other materials are up as well, here. It's pretty drafty -- very happy to hear any feedback. Preamble: When Sabrina Tavernise, Claire Cain Miller, Quoctrung Bui and Robert…

COVID-19 mortality rates by race/ethnicity and age

Why are there such great disparities in COVID-19 deaths across race/ethnic groups in the U.S.? Here's a recent review from New York City: The racial/ethnic disparities in COVID-related mortality may be explained by increased risk of disease because of difficulty engaging in social distancing because of crowding and occupation, and increased disease severity because of…

Race/ethnic intermarriage trends, 2008-2018

Rising, with gender differences. Since 2008 the American Community Survey has been asking respondents whether they got married in the previous 12 months. Using the race/ethnicity of spouses (when they are living together), you can estimate the proportion of new marriages that cross racial/ethnic lines. Defining such "intermarriage" is not as simple as it sounds.…

Framing social class with sample selection

Venn diagrams to help people think about for screening subjects for social class status.

The arriving divorce decline

A 3 percent drop in the refined divorce rate for 2018.

Family diversity, new normal

Family diversity is not just a buzzword (although it is that), and it's not just the recognition of diversity that always existed (although it is that).

New working paper: The rising marriage mortality gap among Whites

Marriage is taking an ever-more prominent place in the social status hierarchy, and now we can add growing mortality inequality, at least among Whites, to that pattern.

The Coming Divorce Decline, Socius edition

"The Coming Divorce Decline, " which I first posted a year ago, has now been published by the journal Socius.  Three thousand people have downloaded it from SocArXiv, I presented it at the Population Association, and it's been widely reported (media reports), but now it's also "peer reviewed." Since Socius is open access, I posted their…

The changing household age range, U.S. 1900-2017

One way to understand daily interaction, and intergenerational resource exchange, is just to look at the structure of households. This doesn't tell you everything that goes on in households, but it gives some strong clues. And we can measure it going back more than a century, thanks to IPUMS.org's collection of Census microdata. In 1900,…

Let’s raise the legal age of marriage in Maryland

Today I sent the following letter to the Maryland House Judiciary Committee, which is scheduled to hold a hearing on these bills tomorrow. Under current law in Maryland, marriage is permitted as young as age 15 with parental consent and evidence of pregnancy or childbirth, and age 16-17 with one or the other, and these…