A sizable literature suggests that coresidence of elderly persons with their children is on the decline in most developing countries. These studies draw on a long tradition of theories that postulate an inverse association between household complexity and economic development. Our analysis of this topic uses new data and measures to assess changes in intergenerational coresidence in 15 developing countries.We have three main objectives. First, we measure trends in intergenerational coresidence in developing countries from the perspective of both the younger generation and the older generation. Second, we assess trends in intergenerational coresidence by household headship patterns. Finally, we conduct multivariate analyses to control for changes in population composition and to assess the relationship between intergenerational coresidence and economic development.The results indicate no clear trends in intergenerational coresidence over the past several decades. Some countries experienced modest increases in coresidence; other countries had modest declines. Even more intriguing, when we focus on intergenerational families headed by the older generation-the family configuration most closely associated with traditional stem-family and joint-family systems-we find significant increases in all but two of the countries examined. This suggests that traditional family forms are stable or increasing across much of the developing world. Moreover, multivariate analyses reveal that key measures of economic development are positively associated with intergenerational families headed by the older generation. Theories of coresidence and developmentIn the second half of the nineteenth century, Frédéric Le Play proposed that economic development was contributing to a decline of intergenerational coresidence. Traditionally, Le Play argued, generations had been bound together by property. The younger generation remained in the ancestral home, providing labor as the family patriarch grew old and eventually inheriting the farm. With commercial and industrial growth in the nineteenth century, fewer families had property to hand down. As a consequence, Le Play contended, more and more of the elderly began to reside separately from their children (Le Play 1884: 3-28).The idea that economic development is associated with simplification of the household and independent residence of the elderly became widely accepted in the twentieth century. Midtwentieth-century sociological literature highlighted the connection between industrialization and nuclear-family structure (e.g., Parsons 1949;Nimkoff 1962). Intergenerational coresidence was said to be undermined by growing wage labor opportunities, which provided incentives for the younger generation to leave the farm and move to urban areas. Moreover, many theorists argued that small nuclear families were best adapted to urban societies characterized by high geographic and social mobility (Wirth 1938;Parsons and Bales 1955;Burgess 1960). NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptPopul Dev Rev. Autho...

I examine the impact of the COVID-19 shock on parents’ labor supply during the initial stages of the pandemic. Using difference-in-difference estimation and monthly panel data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), I compare labor market attachment, non-work activity, hours worked, and earnings and wages of those in areas with early school closures and stay-in-place orders with those in areas with delayed or no pandemic closures. While there was no immediate impact on detachment or unemployment, mothers with jobs in early closure states were 68.8 percent more likely than mothers in late closure states to have a job but not be working as a result of early shutdowns. There was no effect on working fathers or working women without school age children. Mothers who continued working increased their work hours relative to comparable fathers; this effect, however, appears entirely driven by a reduction in fathers’ hours worked. Overall, the pandemic appears to have induced a unique immediate juggling act for working parents of school age children. Mothers took a week of leave from formal work; fathers working fulltime, for example, reduced their hours worked by 0.53 hours over the week. While experiences were different for mothers and fathers, each are vulnerable to scarring and stunted opportunities for career growth and advancement due to the pandemic.

Purpose To measure diversity within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded workforce. The authors use a relevant labor market perspective to more directly understand what the NIH can influence in terms of enhancing diversity through NIH policies. Method Using the relevant labor market (defined as those persons with advanced degrees working as biomedical scientists in the United States) as the conceptual framework, and informed by accepted economic principles, the authors used the American Community Survey (ACS) and NIH administrative data to calculate representation ratios of the NIH-funded biomedical workforce from 2008–2012 by race, ethnicity, sex, and citizenship status, and compared this to the pool of characteristic individuals in the potential labor market. Results In general, the U.S. population during this same time period was a poor comparison group to the NIH-funded scientific workforce. Furthermore, the representation of women and traditionally underrepresented groups in NIH-supported postdoc fellowships and traineeships and mentored career development programs was greater than their representation in the relevant labor market. The same analysis found that these demographic groups are less represented in the NIH-funded independent investigator pool. Conclusions While these findings provided a picture of current NIH-funded workforce and a foundation for understanding the federal role in developing, maintaining, and renewing diverse scientific human resources, further study is needed to identify whether junior- and early-stage investigators who are part of more diverse cohorts will naturally transition into independent NIH-funded investigators, or whether they will leave the workforce before achieving independent researcher status.