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Young_Spring_2023.pdf

ContributorsYoung, Macy (Author) / Biviji, Rizwana (Thesis director) / Ohri-Vachaspati, Punam (Committee member) / Acciai, Francesco (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor)

Created2023-05

Macy Young Honors Thesis Defense.pdf

ContributorsYoung, Macy (Author) / Biviji, Rizwana (Thesis director) / Ohri-Vachaspati, Punam (Committee member) / Acciai, Francesco (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor)

Created2023-05

The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Fertility of Women in Reproductive Ages: Cross-sectional Study

Description

Background: Recent studies have shown a decline in birth rates in large metropolitan areas (after accounting for population), which can be possibly explained by barriers to reproduction associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. Objective: This study’s objective was to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related…

Background: Recent studies have shown a decline in birth rates in large metropolitan areas (after accounting for population), which can be possibly explained by barriers to reproduction associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. Objective: This study’s objective was to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns on the fertility rates of women in reproductive ages living in Greater Phoenix. Methods: The total number of inpatient births and people in both Maricopa and Pinal Counties during pre-COVID-19 years (2017-2019) were compared with those during the COVID-19 years (2021) among women in reproductive ages (15-49 years). To make age-specific comparisons, women in reproductive years were divided into eight distinct age group categories (15-17, 18-20, and then five year age group categories to age 49) from which age-specific, general, and total fertility rates were calculated. Results: Using a two-sample z-test for difference in proportions, findings revealed that the general fertility rate in Greater Phoenix had significantly declined from 48 to 46 per 1,000 population from the pre-COVID-19 period to COVID-19 period (P<0.001). Two sample z-tests were also used to compare age-specific fertility rates, which revealed a significant decline in the fertility rate in women ages 15-17 (from 8.0/1000 to 5.0/1000) (P<0.001), 18-20 (from 43.0/1000 to 35.0/1000) (P<0.001), and 21-24 (from 79.0/1000 to 68.0/1000) (P<0.001) from the pre-COVID-19 period to COVID-19 period, while no significant change was observed in the fertility rate in women ages 25-49. Conclusions: The observed general fertility decline in Greater Phoenix as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic poses significant implications for further research on barriers to reproduction brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdown measures. Another direction for further research involves possibly continuing this study to include years 2022 and 2023 in the COVID-19 period, as well as calculating age-specific fertility rates by race.

ContributorsYoung, Macy (Author) / Biviji, Rizwana (Thesis director) / Ohri-Vachaspati, Punam (Committee member) / Acciai, Francesco (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / College of Health Solutions (Contributor)

Created2023-05

Economic Development and Reproduction: Understanding the Role of Market Opportunities in Shaping Fertility Variation

Description

Evolutionary and economic theories of fertility variation argue that novel subsistence opportunities associated with market economies shape reproduction in ways that both increase parental investment per child and lower overall fertility. I use demographic and ethnographic data from Guatemala as a case study to illustrate how ethnic inequalities in accessing…

Evolutionary and economic theories of fertility variation argue that novel subsistence opportunities associated with market economies shape reproduction in ways that both increase parental investment per child and lower overall fertility. I use demographic and ethnographic data from Guatemala as a case study to illustrate how ethnic inequalities in accessing market opportunities have shaped demographic variation and the perceptions of parental investments. I then discuss two projects that use secondary data sets to address issues of conceptualizing and operationalizing market opportunities in national and cross-population comparative work. The first argues that social relationships are critical means of accessing market opportunities, and uses Guatemala household stocks of certain forms of relational wealth are associated with greater parental investments in education. The second focuses on a methodological issue in how common measures of wealth in comparative demographic studies conflate economic capacity with market opportunities, and how this conceptual confusion biases our interpretations of the observed links between wealth and fertility over the course of the demographic transition.

ContributorsHackman, Joseph Victor (Author) / Hruschka, Daniel J (Thesis advisor) / Maupin, Jonathan (Committee member) / Hill, Kim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2019