Scientific Presentations

LabTalks@­SocialDemography

Department Social Demography
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Rostock, Germany, May 06, 2025

1:00 PM: Talk with Chiara Micheletti - Multistate distributions and morbidity compression: advancing the debate on ageing and health

Abstract

Traditional approaches to assess whether morbidity is compressing or expanding over time typically compare life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE). Changes in the HLE/LE ratio are used to support hypotheses of morbidity compression or expansion. The aim of this paper is to revisit the long-standing ‘compression vs expansion of morbidity’ debate taking advantage of recently illustrated multistate modelling techniques. Such methods allow deriving distributions estimating the number of years individuals have accumulated in good and in less-than-good health throughout their lives. Building on this approach, we propose the ‘healthy year curves’, a new tool measuring the average number of years lived in good health among those who died at a certain age. We provide an empirical application using Danish data for women and men separately, from 2008 to 2018.

1:45 PM: Talk with Kelsey Wright - Cradles in the Storm: How Everyday Uncertainty Shapes Fertility Choices

Abstract

In this study, we first operationalise how economic uncertainty, as a component part of modern daily life, is related to age-specific-fertility-rates (ASFRs). This measure seeks to extend the theoretical and empirical findings of previous research, which has often established economic uncertainty as a shock to everyday life or as an absolute measurement of an aspect of an economy. We do this by estimating ASFRs for each month and geographic FIPS area in the US over a 17+ year period for five-year groups of women of reproductive age (15-49). We measure prevailing uncertainty by generating monthly running averages of the variance of unemployment rates over set time lags ((v), at 3-, 6-, 9-, 12-, 18-, and 24-months) beginning at calculated conception dates. These running variance levels are used to estimate age-stratified multilevel longitudinal generalized linear models, where ASFRs are predicted by the variance of the unemployment rate for duration, (v) months prior to conception. In preliminary results, we find a significant and positive relationship between increased variability in monthly unemployment rates in US FIPS areas and ASFRs for women who are under 25 years old. We also find that ongoing short-term economic uncertainty has a different relationship with fertility than ongoing long-term uncertainty. We plan to explore this phenomena further and extend it to other cases of uncertainty, such as conflict, climate change, and other contexts.

LabTalk, May, 6th from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Rostock time)