ABSTRACT Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study examines the relationship between parental education and adult offspring height in China across birth cohorts from 1930 to 1999. Adult height increased by 6–7 centimetres over this period. While the positive association between fathers’ schooling and adult children’s height remained stable across cohorts, the association with mothers’ schooling strengthened markedly and exhibited large gender differences. The maternal education-height gradient increased more rapidly for sons than for daughters, particularly after the 1970s, coinciding with economic reforms and rising female labour force participation. By the late twentieth century, mothers’ schooling became a stronger predictor of adult offspring height than fathers’ schooling, reflecting greater maternal income, autonomy, and influence over child health investments. In contrast to developed countries, where parental education has tended to reduce height disparities, maternal education in China may have widened height inequalities. Sons appear to have benefited disproportionately from maternal education following economic reforms, suggesting intrahousehold gender bias. A decomposition analysis indicates that changes in the parental education-height association, rather than increases in schooling levels, account for a substantial share of the secular height increase. These findings highlight the gendered nature of human capital formation in China.

ABSTRACT While studies have revealed the importance of parental influence on youth transition and several channels for this influence, they have often analysed parental support as an individual variable unilaterally impacting youth. Instead, my study applies a relational approach to examine how Chinese youth with international tertiary education who return to China for employment perceive and negotiate parental support during their school-to-work transition. Drawing on qualitative interview data from 93 Chinese returnees, I examine how they negotiate parental career advice, job arrangements, and parents’ emotional and financial support in their school-to-work transition and manage intergenerational disagreements about career choices. The findings indicate that parental support for youth transition is a contested, relational process embedded in the socio-economic context of credential inflation, economic recession, and a precarious labour market and characterised by intergenerational ambivalence and complex emotionality. My study reveals the entanglement of youth mobility, transition, and intergenerationality and highlights the intersubjective reflection on and coproduction of youth transition.

ABSTRACT Despite the popular belief that the deterioration of youth employment prospects accelerated fertility decline in Japan, women born in the late 1970s and early 1980s who entered the labour market during the worst job market ‘ice-age’ have slightly more children than older cohorts. After demonstrating this fact, this study discusses the potential reasons for this subtle fertility recovery. I consider two potential mechanisms. First, the lower potential earnings of women increase fertility through lowering the opportunity cost of parenthood. Second, the simultaneous improvement in public support and work environment has enabled more women to continue working after childbirth. Women who had a regular job before childbearing benefit more from these changes. I show that the subtle increase in fertility was driven by college-educated women, providing suggestive evidence for the second explanation.

ABSTRACT Superdiversity is a concept coined and developed in Western contexts to capture the emergent demographic complexity in westward mobility. However, it remains un(der)-analysed in migration in new and emerging geographies. The intent of this paper is not simply to outline the multidimensional nature of superdiversity in China, it also seeks to capture the dynamic interplay of local populations and migrants in a superdiverse context. Taking an ethnographic approach in the international trade city of Yiwu, China, I examine how trade migrants, local residents, educational institutions and government bodies coexist in a market-driven symbiosis – politically, economically, linguistically and socially. Drawing upon Fei Xiaotong’s indigenous sociological theory, I offer insights into the practices of a superdiverse trade community in a non-traditional migration destination outside the West and I also add complexity to the idea of ‘diversity’ itself by showing how it emerges through the interactions between trade migrants and local communities.

ABSTRACT Around half of Chinese children with disabilities study in regular schools, as encouraged by national inclusive education policies. Evidence remains limited regarding whether students with disabilities experience health disadvantages compared to their peers. We analysed a sample of 11,037 middle-school students from a nationally representative survey in China. To improve the comparability in student characteristics and contexts, we take advantage of a unique quasi-experimental setting for within-class comparisons, in which the students were randomly assigned to each class. This study is among the first to document substantial health disparities between students with disabilities and their classmates, i.e. lower self-rated health scores and higher depression scores, despite a similar probability of hospitalisation experiences in the past year. The patterns persist between grades and genders. Evidence also suggests protective moderation effects of female class-teachers on the health of girls with disabilities. These findings call for attention to the importance of aligning healthcare and education policies to reduce child population health disparities and promote inclusive development.

ABSTRACT In Iran, childbearing is confined to marriage with a unique pattern of long interbirth intervals. This paper explores the influence of marriage on fertility trends within the context of the recent pronatalist policy introduced by the government to promote marriage and childbearing. We determine that Iran’s pronatalist policy has overlooked the implications of recent fertility trends and the imbalance in the marriage market which led to a marriage boom suggesting a mismatch between policy goals and demographic realities. Beyond this, the 2019 economic downturn is a reason for the recent fall in fertility. The recent increase in number of marriages is attributed to marriage loans provided to young couples. However, paradoxically, these loans have led to delayed first births, counteracting the intended effects. We conclude that the incentives included in the 2021 Population Law are not closely aligned with the social values and aspirations of the young generation.

ABSTRACT Fertility change varies spatially in China, however, the trend and factors that influence the variation at the county level are not fully understood. We analysed the spatial variation in fertility change at the county level in China between 2000 and 2010 using spatial Durbin models. We focused on understanding whether and how changes in population composition, local context, and migration influence changing fertility levels across counties. The results show that fertility change varied in different regions from 2000 to 2010, supporting the idea that the stages of fertility transition are spatially different. An increase in females' educational level and a decrease in the share of the married population in a given county and its neighbouring counties are associated with fertility decline. The results highlight that the determinants of the second demographic transition (e.g. education, marital status, gender equality) are more appropriate than economic development and urbanisation to explain spatial variation in fertility change in China from 2000 to 2010. There are significant spillover effects, i.e. changes in neighbouring areas also influence fertility changes in a given region.

ABSTRACT In the modern knowledge economy, talents are widely recognized as a critical driver of regional economic development. This study examines the two-stage migration of Chinese university graduates – from home region to university and then to the labour market – based on first-hand survey data. The findings reveal that graduates who previously migrated for higher education are more inclined to migrate again for employment. Furthermore, university quality emerges as a key factor shaping mobility patterns, positioning universities either as magnets or as dispersers of talent. Specifically, at the education-migration stage, higher-quality universities significantly increase the likelihood of students migrating out of their home provinces to pursue higher education. At the employment-migration stage, graduates from top-ranking universities exhibit higher mobility when entering the labour market. These results underscore the role of universities as pivotal nodes in the national talent mobility system and highlight the heterogeneity among universities in their capacity to attract and retain human capital based on their quality.

ABSTRACT Although living alone and widowhood are recognised risk factors for loneliness among older adults, their long-term effects in the South Korean context remain underexplored. This paper examines the dynamic relationship between living alone, widowhood, and loneliness among older adults (aged 65 and older) in South Korea. Using longitudinal data from eight waves (2006–2020) of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA), we employ an adaptation-to-life-events methodology to assess how these two life stressors affect loneliness over time. Older South Korean females are four times more likely to live alone and six times more likely to be widowed than males. Estimation results show that both transitions significantly increase loneliness. Adaptation to living alone is relatively rapid, while adaptation to widowhood is slower. Women experience a spike in loneliness during the first two years of widowhood, followed by partial recovery. In contrast, widowed men experience a sharp increase in loneliness that intensifies over time. We also find that the nexus between living alone and loneliness has gradually weakened from 2006 to 2020, suggesting changing social norms or support structures. Findings highlight the need for gender-responsive policies and targeted support programmes to effectively mitigate loneliness during key life transitions in later life.