Announcements

October 2024 : New Research Sheds Light on the US Shift toward Smaller Families

The national fertility rate has been in steady decline in recent decades, but the fundamental transition from high to low fertility in the United States occurred between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1930s. 

New research just out in Demography sheds new light on how fertility decline began in late nineteenth-century America, sparking the historic shift known as the Demographic Transition.

“We show that a growing number of Americans were choosing to stop childbearing after two or three children,” said George Alter of the University of Michigan Population Studies Center, who authored the study with J. David Hacker of the Minnesota Population Center. “It was not a gradual shift from larger to smaller families, and this suggests that a new preference for very small families was spreading. By 1910, this ideal was becoming common in the northern states, though it had still not taken hold in the South.”

Today, demographers can understand childbearing goals and behaviors with questionnaires such as the CDC’s National Surveys of Family Growth, fielded since the 1970s. But to understand what happened at the turn of the century, these historical demographers looked at the impact of multiple births (e.g., having twins) on subsequent family limitation. 

The researchers supposed that multiple births strain family resources in ways that should highlight preferences for family size, birth spacing, and stopping behavior. Since couples with surviving twins reached their target family size sooner than couples with singleton births, they should be more likely to practice family limitation.

They examined these hypotheses by analyzing families with twins in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Censuses– a project that Hacker noted would not have been possible without the large number of observations in the full-count IPUMS data set. 

The investigators also used two new techniques. J. David Hacker developed a new way to impute children who died before the Census. And they used a regression technique called the “cure model” developed in biomedical research to distinguish between stopping and spacing of births.

They found clear evidence of family limitation following multiple births: Couples with twins or triplets were more likely to stop childbearing, and those who continued having children delayed their next birth.

“The results show that many American couples responded to multiple births by practicing some form of birth control,” said Alter. 

The researchers found no evidence that some groups relied on birth spacing to reduce family size while others relied primarily on stopping.

Responses to multiple births were larger in groups previously known to be the drivers of fertility decline– high-SES couples living in urban areas of the United States. As expected, the researchers found little or no evidence of birth control among farm families in the South or among first-generation immigrant groups – but stopping and spacing behavior of second-generation immigrant groups suggests these couples were assimilating to new American childbearing norms.

“Roughly one third of all couples were aiming to stop after two or three children,” said Alter. “These couples were the vanguard of the small families that became dominant for the rest of the twentieth century.”

George Alter is Research Professor at ICPSR and the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research and Professor of History at the University of Michigan. J. David Hacker is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Minnesota Population Center.

October 2024 : Katie Berry Receives NIH Director's Early Independence Award

(October 8, 2024)—The National Institutes of Health has recognized MPC Member and UMN School of Public Health (SPH) Assistant Professor Katie Berry with its 2024 NIH Director's Early Independence Award, which supports outstanding, early career scientists and is designed to help them bypass the traditional postdoctoral training period to launch independent research careers.

With the Early Independence Award, which is part of NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, Berry will investigate potential policies to improve health and reduce mortality for people experiencing homelessness across the U.S.

More than 582,000 people in the U.S. experience homelessness each night, and a staggering 1.25 million people enter the shelter system each year. People experiencing homelessness endure extreme adversity, drastically increasing their risk of dying young. Although the response to the homelessness crisis primarily occurs at the local level, local data on homeless mortality is largely unavailable. The limited data that does exist shows substantial variation in homeless mortality rates by place, suggesting that place-based factors may impact mortality risk. 

Berry will explore this association between place-based factors and homeless mortality — providing insight into how local policies and programs might be optimized to improve health and reduce mortality among people experiencing homelessness.

A social epidemiologist and population health scientist, Berry’s research investigates how social policy and other factors shape health and health inequities. Berry recently completed her PhD in Epidemiology at SPH and trained with the Minnesota Population Center in the Population Health Program. In August she joined the SPH faculty as an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health. She is also a faculty member of the Minnesota Population Center and the Life Course Center. 

Berry will publish the results of the research in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, she is planning to share key findings with the nearly 400 Continuums of Care programs across the country (Continuums of Care are local planning bodies that oversee homeless policy programming and service distribution within specific geographic areas). Berry is also planning to create a publicly accessible project website featuring interactive visualizations, project data, and key results.

Collaborators on the project include Darin Erickson from SPH, David Van Riper from the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, Rebekah Pratt from U of M Medical School, and Katherine Diaz Vickery, U of M Medical School and Hennepin Health Care Research Institute.

October 2024 : Carjacking and homicide in Minneapolis after the police killing of George Floyd

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (09/18/2024) — Community violence and crime have negative impacts on health, with disadvantaged neighborhoods disproportionately impacted. Following the murder of George Floyd, violent crimes like homicide increased, particularly in marginalized communities. Researchers from the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota sought to expand violent crime research by studying carjacking—taking a vehicle by threat or force when the owner is present. Although media reports suggested a surge in carjackings during this time, there was little empirical evidence to verify this claim. The researchers aimed to see whether carjackings indeed rose in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder and if they followed the same pattern as homicides—increasing but remaining concentrated in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods after the unrest. 

The study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine found: 

• Minneapolis experienced a fivefold increase in carjackings after the murder of George Floyd.
• Unlike homicide, which remained more concentrated in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, carjackings spread across nearly all census tracts, such that many socially advantaged neighborhoods in Minneapolis experienced a carjacking for the first time after the killing. 
• Despite the spread of carjackings throughout the city, socially disadvantaged neighborhoods still saw the greatest absolute increase in carjackings.

“Carjacking is a violent and frightening crime, and our findings have implications for health and health equity, ” says lead author Allison Lind. “The unequal exposure to violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods (often communities of color) worsens existing health and social inequities. At the same time, carjackings spreading into more advantaged neighborhoods could trigger a strong policy response, including punitive criminal justice responses, known to have a negative impact on population health, particularly for communities of color.”

The social conditions in Minneapolis following the police killing of George Floyd likely contributed to the rise in some forms of violent crime. The murder occurred shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time of high emotional strain and weakened social controls. Following the upheaval, there may have been widespread perceptions of disorder, a reduced police presence, and more opportunities for crimes like carjacking. 

Regardless of the causes of the increase, the challenge ahead is to identify policy responses that effectively curb violent crime without resorting to harsh and inequitable policing and sentencing practices. It is also crucial to address the disproportionate public health impacts of crime and violence across neighborhoods. 

April 2024 : Sharp rise in firearm deaths among rural Black youth

April 2024 : Rural-Urban Differences in Housing Cost Burden Across the U.S.

University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center Policy Brief 

MPC Members: Alexis Swendener, Jonathan Schroeder, Carrie Henning-Smith

• Housing cost burden (spending over 30% of income on housing) is widespread across the U.S. with a third of urban households and a quarter of rural households being cost burdened
• In each of the four U.S. census regions, nine division, and in most states, higher proportions of urban households are housing cost burdened compared to rural households, but differences vary widely 
• The Western region has the highest rates of those experiencing housing cost burden for both rural (29%) and urban locations (37%) overall, largely among states in the Pacific division 
• California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts have particularly high rates of cost burden among both rural and urban households (ranging from 34% - 41%)