Prenatal Demography: The Production of Birth Cohorts and the Study of Social Processes
Pregnancy loss is a primary limit on human reproduction and a key driver of population dynamics. It shapes the composition of families and communities. It is also very difficult to observe. Drawing on new forms of online activity data from an app that tracks fertility over time, we demonstrate that U.S. pregnancy survival is socially patterned along multiple dimensions. We argue that understanding this process is of broad interest; it is essential to answering a number of central questions in the social sciences. We discuss two examples: (1) how early-life experiences shape later-life welfare and (2) how children’s traits affect their parents’ outcomes. We also discuss why these estimates have implications for ongoing changes in the reproductive health care landscape. With this approach, we extend a long history of demographic research on cohort selection to the prenatal period.
Date: 22 February 2023, 16:00 (Wednesday, 6th week, Hilary 2023)
Venue: Nuffield College, New Road OX1 1NF
Venue Details: Clay Room
Speaker: Jenna Nobles (University of Wisconsin)
Organisers: Ridhi Kashyap (University of Oxford), Prof. Melinda Mills (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: maxine.collett@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Nuffield College Sociology Seminars
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Maxine Collett