Healthy working life expectancy estimates often exclude individuals working beyond retirement age, especially in countries with large informal economies. In South Korea, where old-age employment is highly prevalent, we need to identify who works past retirement, for how long, and in what state of health. Using the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (2006–22) and discrete-time multistate models, we estimate healthy and unhealthy working life expectancy at age 50 by gender, education, and urban/rural residence. On average, men work seven years past retirement age, and 28 per cent of their life expectancy at age 50 is spent working with at least one chronic health condition. These values increase to 10 years and 33 per cent for men in rural areas. Estimates for women are lower than those observed for men, and educational differences are minimal. Our findings highlight how gender and urban/rural residence may contribute to old-age health and employment by shaping opportunities and behaviours throughout the life course.

In the past, the choice of children’s names was closely linked to life trajectories. This paper investigates the connection between children’s names and child mortality during the demographic transition. Analysing data from the Veneto region (Northern Italy) and the Venetian parish of San Marco between 1816 and 1869, we find that traditional names are associated with higher neonatal mortality, particularly among girls. In contrast, children with unconventional names—those not named after grandparents or godparents or given the most frequent traditional names—face a lower risk of dying within the first month of life. Our findings underscore the importance of names in historical demography as predictors of demographic trajectories. Moreover, they suggest that naming practices may mirror varying levels of parental attention or a shift towards more modern concepts of childcare.

This paper uses population smallpox mortality rates in eighteenth-century Sweden and the death toll from the 1707–09 smallpox epidemic in Iceland to estimate plausible ranges for the case fatality rate (CFR) of smallpox (Variola major). We find that smallpox CFRs could be extremely high (43–55 per cent) when smallpox attacked a population where both children and adults were susceptible, as in Iceland. However, where smallpox was endemic and therefore a disease of childhood, as in Sweden, the estimated CFR is only 8–10 per cent: far lower than the consensus CFR of 20–30 per cent. We argue that social factors explain these differences. Where both adults and children were susceptible, smallpox epidemics fundamentally disrupted basic household tasks and nursing of the sick, dramatically increasing the CFR. Thus, when historians and epidemiologists give CFRs for smallpox, they should consider the population and context rather than relying on an implausible intrinsic CFR of 20–30 per cent.

In recent decades, a long-term internal migration decline has been observed in many countries, including Japan. To explore the dynamics of internal migration in Japan, we apply the age–period–cohort-interaction model to five-year inter-prefectural migration rate data from six nationally representative surveys conducted between 1991 and 2016. The results show regular age-specific migration patterns, fluctuating period effects, and inter- and intra-cohort differences. Age effects reflect general migration patterns and largely explain the decline, while period effects show no consistent trend. Relatively recent generations tend to exhibit statistically significant high or low migration rates, visible as inter-cohort differences. While some of these inter-cohort differences converge with age, cohorts that experienced socio-economic shocks in their early 20s display consistently low migration rates. This pattern indicates that such shocks impose long-term structural constraints to migration as a pathway to accessing improved employment, suggesting the need for targeted policy interventions to counter declining internal migration.

Research on childlessness by educational attainment typically focuses on lifetime childlessness at age 40 or 45, with less known about younger ages. This study examines trends in childlessness by age and education for men and women in Finland from 1987 to 2022, using total population register data. We focus on childlessness at ages 30, 35, 40, and 45. The results show that childlessness has increased at most ages, with acceleration in the past decade. At ages 40 and 45, the association between education and childlessness is negative for men—men with lower education are more often childless—while among women, the association has reversed from positive to negative in recent years. At age 30, childlessness is higher among the highly educated, reflecting later entry into parenthood. At age 35, childlessness has risen across all groups, notably including tertiary-educated men and women. These trends suggest that the increase in lifetime childlessness in Finland is likely to continue and become more widespread.

As Western populations face projected decline, understanding the demographics of high-fertility subpopulations becomes increasingly important. The Amish represent one rapidly growing North American subgroup, yet existing demographic studies are dated and narrowly focused. Here, we use a new population database of >50,000 households—the vast majority of Amish—to offer an up-to-date population-wide analysis that shows high fertility and low mortality and attrition. Specifically, women’s median age at marriage is 20.9, and 87.1 per cent marry by age 50; premarital conceptions are low (4.30 per cent of first births); spacing between marriage and first birth is short (mean 17.2 months); the total fertility rate is 6.1; infant mortality is 5.9; life expectancy at birth is 81.16 years; attrition is low (84.46 per cent retention for those aged 40+); and in-conversion is very low (154 individuals across nearly a century). These definitive population-wide figures open the way for testing predictors of population change and charting how growing subpopulations are shaping regions.

In the absence of complete civil registration and vital statistics, Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSSs) are important sources of population-based data throughout sub-Saharan Africa. However, HDSS data on the vital status of newborns are often unreliable due to omission of those who were born and died between two rounds of data collection and are therefore never enumerated. This study investigates whether pregnancy registration improves estimation of under-five mortality (U5M) in three HDSSs in The Gambia, Kenya, and South Africa. We find that mortality is higher for children whose mother’s pregnancy was observed than for children who were first registered after birth. Cox proportional hazards models with inverse probability weights further suggest that this difference is probably due to improved ascertainment of deaths in pregnancy cohorts and unlikely to be driven by a selection effect. These results highlight the importance of pregnancy registration in HDSSs for the estimation of U5M.

In historical populations, death rates for females often exceeded those of males in reproductive ages. However, childbirth-related deaths were not the only cause of excess mortality among adult women. This study expands on work by Schofield and colleagues by re-examining mortality after childbirth in the Cambridge Group Family Reconstitutions. Part 1 applies event history methods in a new way to focus on excess mortality following childbirth. Unlike previous methods, which assumed equal background mortality for wives and husbands, this method compares maternal and paternal mortality. The results show higher mortality for females than males even after removing deaths following childbirth. Part 2 explores the determinants of maternal deaths in the puerperal period. Deaths of new mothers rose when their husbands and children were more likely to die, but the risks of death for new mothers were much higher than for other married adults. These results highlight the extraordinary vulnerability of mothers in the weeks following childbirth.

This paper aims to assess the effect of the Great Recession on population-level immigrant mortality in Spain, highlighting the mediating effects of migration flows that shape the composition of immigrant populations. To investigate this, I use individual data from Spain’s death and population registers for the period 2003–19. First, I find a significant mortality advantage at adult ages for non-Western immigrants compared with the native born. Second, I show that this mortality advantage for immigrants relative to the native born increased during the Great Recession, despite immigrants being affected more by the unemployment crisis. Unemployment-driven outmigration flows may have contributed to this change in relative mortality at ages 40–59, meaning that immigrants returning to their country were negatively selected. I argue that the crisis may have imposed a second selection on non-Western immigrants staying in Spain and that negative selection at departure—even if not due to ill health itself—affected mortality.

Despite its significance, men’s fertility has been largely overlooked in demographic research. This study seeks to address this gap by conducting a systematic comparative analysis of men’s and women’s fertility using data from the Spanish ECEPOV–2021 survey, a large-scale data set (N = 424,493) from the Spanish national statistical office. Findings indicate that women generally exhibit slightly higher completed cohort fertility rates than men, with exceptions among remarried, college-educated, and immigrant men, who show higher fertility than their female counterparts. Childlessness emerges as a key factor underlying fertility differentials between the sexes, accounting for nearly half of the observed difference. After using matching techniques to control for compositional differences, the study concludes that adjusting for demographic and socio-economic factors significantly reduces, although does not entirely eliminate, the fertility differential. Residual differences may stem from measurement errors, selection biases, or unmeasured variables.