Hybrid Format

LabTalk with Rishabh Tyagi and Md Anwer Hossain

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Rostock, Germany, October 29, 2024

Hybrid Format
Room 400 and Zoom

1:00 PM: Rishabh Tyagi 

Adult Children’s Unemployment and Parental Mental Health in India: The Moderating Role of Social Capital, Income Inequality & Community-level Policies.

This study examines how adult children's unemployment is associated with parental mental health, considering the strong familial ties prevalent in Indian society using data from the Longitudinal Ageing Survey of India, having 73,396 individuals aged 45 and above. Since India has vast heterogeneities in social capital, income and community-level policies, we examined their moderation effects for this relationship. We considered the unemployment of any of the first eight children as our treatment and measured parental mental health using the CES-D score. We employ inverse probability weighting based on the logistic regression model to form a pseudo-control group, controlling for the confounding demographic and socio-economic factors. Our findings indicate a four percentage points (ppts) increase in the probability of parental depression associated with adult children's unemployment. However, there are no significant differences in the effect for fathers (4.6 ppts) and mothers (3.4 ppts). Further heterogeneity analysis reveals that the elderly with high social participation and high monthly per capita expenditure experienced no effects of their children's unemployment on their mental health. Finally, we found significantly less increase in the risk of depression following adult children's unemployment for the elderly whose villages have the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) scheme than not. This research concludes that social capital and high income per capita protect the elderly’s mental health following their children's unemployment. We also found that the availability of the NREGA scheme had a protective effect on the elderly’s probability of depression as it relieves them regarding their children’s well-being as this scheme provides them daily jobs to go about in their lives.

1:45 PM: Md Anwer Hossain

Understanding the High Prevalence of Premature and Early Menopause in South and Southeast Asia

Premature menopause (before age 40) and early menopause (ages 40-44) have substantial negative consequences on women's long-term health and well-being (Shuster et al., 2010). The timing of menopause is influenced by a broad spectrum of factors, including genetic, biological, environmental, and socio-economic determinants (Davis et al., 2023; El Khoudary et al., 2019; Schoenaker et al., 2014). However, most research on this topic has been conducted in high-income countries, limiting the applicability of these findings to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Despite South Asia (SA) and Southeast Asia (SEA) having the highest prevalence of premature and early menopause (Leone et al., 2023), there is a lack of comprehensive studies examining the determinants and their regional variations. Our study seeks to address this gap by utilizing Demographic and Health Survey data from 12 SA/SEA countries to identify the key demographic and socio-economic determinants of premature and early menopause in these regions. In this presentation, I will review the existing literature, highlight research gaps, introduce proposed methodology, and share some preliminary results of our study.

Participation

Please register via email (office-myrskyla@demogr.mpg.de) for online participation. The Zoom link will be sent to you afterwards.