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1. Family and household sources of poverty for Black, Hispanic, and White newborns

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12781  

   Rendall, Michael S. ; Weden, Margaret M. ; Brown, Joey ( June 2021 , Journal of Marriage and Family)

   To understand the importance of family and household structure, including cohabiting partners and nonkin adults, in explaining Black‐White versus Hispanic‐White newborn poverty disparities in the United States.

   The official poverty measure (OPM) has typically been used in scholarly studies of newborn and childhood poverty, but this measure excludes cohabitors' and nonkin household members' presence and income. Both are likely to have poverty‐preventing roles when a birth is nonmarital.

   A household poverty measure inclusive of all household members is compared to the OPM, using data on households of White, Black, and Hispanic newborns from the 2005–2017 American Community Survey (N = 342,048). Regression decompositions are used to investigate the roles of mother's education and partner and other coresident adult presence and resources.

   Lower maternal educational attainment explains most of the Hispanic‐White poverty disparity at birth. The prevalence and poverty‐alleviating effectiveness of cohabitation and living with other adults, however, is greater for Hispanic than for Black unmarried mothers, and is greater for foreign‐born than for US‐born Hispanics.

   Black mothers' lesser access to the resources of a partner or other adults in the year of the newborn's arrival is critical in producing a remarkably high Black‐White newborn poverty disparity. Official poverty obscures the greater benefits of cohabitation and living with other adults for newborns of Hispanic mothers overall, and of foreign‐born Hispanic mothers in particular.

    

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2. Does Parental Migration During Childhood Affect Children's Lifetime Educational Attainment? Evidence From Mexico

   https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9411336  

   Wassink, Joshua Thomas ; Viera, Janelle Ashley ( September 2021 , Demography)

   Abstract Existing scholarship reveals important and competing influences of parental migration on children's educational trajectories. On the one hand, in the short term, left-behind children commonly take on additional housework and sometimes place less emphasis on education if they aspire to follow in their parents' migratory footsteps. On the other hand, parental migration often leads to monetary transfers (remittances), which reduces financial pressure on sending households and can strengthen educational aspirations among children left behind. Because previous studies examined these effects on children still completing their educations, the cumulative impact of parental migration on children's educational attainment remains uncertain. In this study, we use retrospective life history data from the Mexican Migration Project to link parental migrations occurring during childhood with children's educational attainment measured in adulthood. Using a novel counterfactual approach, we find that parental migration during childhood is associated with increased years of schooling and higher probabilities of completing lower-secondary school, entering upper-secondary school, and completing upper-secondary school. These associations were strongest among children whose parents did not complete primary school and those living in rural areas. Results from a placebo test suggest that these positive associations cannot be attributed to unobserved household characteristics related to parental migration, which supports a causal interpretation of our main findings. Thus, our analysis suggests that, on average, and particularly among more-disadvantaged households, the long-term educational benefits associated with parental migration outweigh short-term disruptions and strain associated with parental absence. 

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3. Two Methods for Studying the Developmental Significance of Family Structure Trajectories

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12639  

   Johnston, Carol A. ; Crosnoe, Robert ; Mernitz, Sara E. ; Pollitt, Amanda M. ( December 2019 , Journal of Marriage and Family)

   The objective of this research note is to use both sequence analysis (SA) and repeated‐measures latent class analysis (LCA) to identify children's family structure trajectories from birth through age 15 and compare how the two sets of trajectories predict alcohol use across the transition from adolescence into young adulthood.

   Contemporary family scholars have studied the influence of changes in family structure, often referred to as family structure instability, on child and adolescent development. Typically, this research has focused on either the number or type of transitions children have experienced, but statistical advances are increasing the viability of more complex person‐centered approaches to this issue, such as SA and LCA. The choice to use one approach or the other, however, is often discipline specific and relies on different assumptions and estimation techniques that may produce different results.

   The authors used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth–Child and Youth Cohort (N= 11,515) to identify clusters (using SA) and classes (using repeated‐measures LCA) that represented children's family structure trajectories from birth through age 15. Using two multiple‐group random slope models, the authors predicted alcohol use across adolescence and young adulthood (ages 16–24) among the clusters (Model 1) and classes (Model 2).

   The SA identified five clusters, but the LCA further differentiated the sample with more detail on timing and identified eight classes. The sensitivity to timing in the LCA solution was substantively relevant to alcohol use across the transition to young adulthood.

   Overall, the SA is perhaps more suited to research questions requiring exclusive group membership in large, comparative analyses, and the LCA more appropriate when the research questions include timing or focus on transitioning into or out of single‐parent and stepfamily homes.

    

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4. Why Livelihoods Matter in the Gendering of Household Water Insecurity

   https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0105.1  

   Nébié, Elisabeth Kago Ilboudo ; Brewis, Alexandra ; Wutich, Amber ; Pérenne, Yogo ; Magassa, Kadidiatou ( January 2024 , Weather, Climate, and Society)

   One of the most pressing and immediate climate concerns globally is inadequate and unsafe household water. The livelihoods of smallholder crop and livestock farmers are especially vulnerable to these challenges. Past research suggests that water insecurity is highly gendered, and women are theorized to be more aware of and impacted by water insecurity than men. Our study reengages this literature through a livelihood lens, comparing gendered perception of household water insecurity across crop and livestock subsistence modalities in a semiarid region of Burkina Faso in the Sahel region of West Africa, where water insecurity is closely intertwined with both seasonality and rainfall unpredictability. Our mixed-methods ethnographic study sampled matched men and women in households with water insecurity data collected from 158 coresident spousal pairs who engaged primarily in pastoralism or agriculture. Contrary to predictions from the existing literature, men engaged in livestock husbandry perceived greater water insecurity than matched women in the same household. We suggest this reflects men’s responsibility for securing water for the animals—which consume most of the household’s water among livestock farmers. In contrast, men engaged in cropping perceive less water insecurity than women in the same household, aligning with predictions from past research. Our findings suggest that the relationship between gender and water insecurity is more highly nuanced and related to livelihood strategies than previously recognized, with significant implications for how water insecurity is conceptualized theoretically and methodologically in the contexts of people’s everyday management and experience of the most immediate and proximate climate-related challenges.

    

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5. Ecological Analyses of Mycobacteria in Showerhead Biofilms and Their Relevance to Human Health

   https://doi.org/10.1128/mBio.01614-18  

   Gebert, Matthew J. ; Delgado-Baquerizo, Manuel ; Oliverio, Angela M. ; Webster, Tara M. ; Nichols, Lauren M. ; Honda, Jennifer R. ; Chan, Edward D. ; Adjemian, Jennifer ; Dunn, Robert R. ; Fierer, Noah ; et al ( November 2018 , mBio)

   ABSTRACT Bacteria within the genus Mycobacterium can be abundant in showerheads, and the inhalation of aerosolized mycobacteria while showering has been implicated as a mode of transmission in nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung infections. Despite their importance, the diversity, distributions, and environmental predictors of showerhead-associated mycobacteria remain largely unresolved. To address these knowledge gaps, we worked with citizen scientists to collect showerhead biofilm samples and associated water chemistry data from 656 households located across the United States and Europe. Our cultivation-independent analyses revealed that the genus Mycobacterium was consistently the most abundant genus of bacteria detected in residential showerheads, and yet mycobacterial diversity and abundances were highly variable. Mycobacteria were far more abundant, on average, in showerheads receiving municipal water than in those receiving well water and in U.S. households than in European households, patterns that are likely driven by differences in the use of chlorine disinfectants. Moreover, we found that water source, water chemistry, and household location also influenced the prevalence of specific mycobacterial lineages detected in showerheads. We identified geographic regions within the United States where showerheads have particularly high abundances of potentially pathogenic lineages of mycobacteria, and these “hot spots” generally overlapped those regions where NTM lung disease is most prevalent. Together, these results emphasize the public health relevance of mycobacteria in showerhead biofilms. They further demonstrate that mycobacterial distributions in showerhead biofilms are often predictable from household location and water chemistry, knowledge that advances our understanding of NTM transmission dynamics and the development of strategies to reduce exposures to these emerging pathogens. IMPORTANCE Bacteria thrive in showerheads and throughout household water distribution systems. While most of these bacteria are innocuous, some are potential pathogens, including members of the genus Mycobacterium that can cause nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung infection, an increasing threat to public health. We found that showerheads in households across the United States and Europe often harbor abundant mycobacterial communities that vary in composition depending on geographic location, water chemistry, and water source, with households receiving water treated with chlorine disinfectants having particularly high abundances of certain mycobacteria. The regions in the United States where NTM lung infections are most common were the same regions where pathogenic mycobacteria were most prevalent in showerheads, highlighting the important role of showerheads in the transmission of NTM infections. 

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