Population Center Research Themes: Families in/as Context

About Families in/as Context

Births and deaths form and re-form families. Family also is the context in which people make the choices that influence major demographic events – births, deaths, and moves (to the extent to which events are driven by choices). Family is also an important focus of public policy. Governments provide varying levels of support to families and pursue policy goals by offering families incentives to make the choices the government hopes they will make. Thus, understanding the nexus of events and composition that is “the family” is central to population research.   BPC affiliates are engaged in three kinds of research on the contexts of family:

• Household Economics, Fertility and Public Policy
• The Formal and Biodemography of Household and Family
• Families in the Social World

Families in/as Context Research Projects

Project Title:  Integration of Welfare, Mental Health, and Workforce Development for Asian Immigrant Welfare Users
BPC Affiliate:  Julian Chow
Funding: BPC
Other Themes: Labor, Immigration
Description: The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 has adversely impacted immigrant participation in welfare.  In California, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) immigrants have steadily decreased their enrollment in welfare programs over the past years due to the regulations on immigrants set forth by welfare reform, as well “chilling effects” whereby immigrants are misinformed and/or discouraged from seeking assistance.  The purpose of this pilot grant proposal is to conduct preliminary study by analyzing data, developing the conceptual framework regarding social capital, social networks and cultural distinctiveness.

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Project Title:  Changes in social networks over the later life cycle.
BPC Affiliate: Claude Fischer
Funding: BPC, CEDA
Other Themes: Labor, Historical Demography
Description: Given the acknowledged importance of personal social networks to the health of people generally, but to older people in particular, it is important to know how those networks change as people move into the older stages of life, including transiting to empty nest, retirement, and widowhood. Little seems to be securely understood now.  Goals of this pilot project are to (1) review the literature; (2) analyze existing data-sets where they may be appropriate, and (c) given what appear to be limitations in those data-sets, develop plans for an original, longitudinal survey beginning roughly 2012.

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Project Title: Returns to Reproductive Health Care
BPC Affiliate: Elisabeth Sadoulet with Kelly Jones
Funding: BPC
Other Themes: Population Health
Description:  The purpose of this study would be to assess the returns to reproductive health services (RHS) in the context of poor countries in Africa. It is proposed that reproductive health care impacts not only the recipients of the services, but in fact improves the health and future human capital development of the children of such recipients.

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Project Title:  Sharing in networks: Individuals or Households
BPC Affiliate: Ethan Ligon
Funding: BPC, CEDA
Description:   There are several goals to this research. The first goal is to model individuals’ behavior in terms of intergenerational exchange within social networks and use observed patterns of behavior from both survey data and experimental data to verify our models. The second is then to specify, estimate, and test a fully dynamic program of sharing within several small, well-defined social networks.  The value of conducting this work in a developing country is the possibility of collecting data on an entire community. The behavior and relationships we find in Paraguay will be relevant for understanding circumstances in the US as well. After we develop mechanisms to model interactions and measure efficiency and sources of inefficiencies among care of the elderly in a completely enumerated network, we will know better how to deal with the data on intergenerational social interactions in the US for incomplete random samples.

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