Conference Agenda

The effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) have urged the United Nations to include its elimination in two Sustainable Development Goals. The literature stresses the importance of classifying drivers using the ecological model. The aim of this work is to evaluate which of its dimensions better explain IPV.

We used Bayesian Hierarchical logistic regression models, using data from the Demographic and Health Survey collected from eleven countries from Sub-Saharan Africa between 2016 and 2020. In all, a total of 40,866 ever married women aged 15-49 years were included in the analyses. Model fit checks and selection were conducted using the Deviance Information Criterion and Watanabe-Akaike Information Criterion, where lower scores indicated a better fit.

The best fitting model is the full ecological one, but those including only couples’ and individual characteristics did not differ much in terms of goodness of fit. Focusing on the education of men and on whether they manifest patterns of control – as well as women’s past experiences with abuse – could suffice in the study of IPV.

Policies that aim to reduce the prevalence of IPV should focus on men’s education and awareness of controlling and abusive behaviours.

Short abstract:

Recently, Africa has experienced a significant increase in internal movements. Most research in Ghana has paid attention to rural-urban and North-South migration, but some studies identified some changes in the determinants of internal mobility, in particular, those regarding gender and education. Counting on accurate data regarding population movements is difficult given that migration is often informal and undocumented. Using microdata from the Demographic and Health Survey carried out in 2022, our main purpose is to empirically update knowledge about internal migration in Ghana. First, we assess the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Ghanaians comparing non-migrants against recent and less recent migrants. Second, we examine the determinants of internal migration in a multivariate setting, giving special attention to the role played by education and to gender differences. Third, we focus the attention on migrants only, studying declared motivations behind the move and the Wealth Index of the household. Analyses are run separately for women and men.

In media reports and public debates, climate change has often been depicted as a major reason for expecting massively increasing migration flows. In the future, more and more people would be on the run from extreme weather events, looking for new places to live as a growing share of their current habitats turn inhabitable. As such, climate-driven migration would add to already ongoing flows due to global socioeconomic inequality. However, according to recent scholarly literature, such claims are based on speculation rather than based on solid scientific reasoning and evidence. This paper aims to review both the theoretical reasons and empirical evidence gathered so far about climate-induced migration. From a theoretical perspective, it turns out not to be so clear that climate change must lead to more people being on the run. This paper outlines alternative theoretical scenarios. As to the evidence, we need to turn to history on the one hand for full-fledge empirical data, next to the results of theory-based projections on the other. As to the latter, the margins of uncertainty in available projections are large. To conclude, the paper puts climate-induced migration into the wider perspective of global migration flows in human history.

Marrying as a child is a fundamental violation of human rights and has serious consequences for young girls’ lives. Despite having declined in the last decades, early marriage is still pervasive globally, especially in South Asia. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that climate change affects the timing and patterns of life course transitions, including the transition into unions of girls under 18. This study focuses on the Southern Asian region, where both extreme weather and child marriage prevalence are among the highest worldwide. We estimate the relationship between the two phenomena by applying multilevel survival modelling to integrated data based on the Demographic and Health Survey for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and the climatic information by the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index. Our findings bear important implications for studies on family formation dynamics and women’s rights under the threat of global climate change.

This study examines how exposure to climate-related natural hazards, specifically floods and heatwaves, influences fertility behaviours in the UK. Using longitudinal data from Understanding Society (2009–2022) linked with high-resolution temperature and flood data, we investigate how direct experiences with these climate events shape individuals’ likelihood of having a child. Employing multilevel logistic discrete-time event-history models with KHB mediation analysis, we aim to uncover the pathways that mediate this relationship. We hypothesize that exposure to climate hazards may reduce the likelihood of conceiving a child resulting in a live birth, with environmental attitudes and behaviours, mental health, and optimism about the future potentially acting as mediators. Furthermore, we consider the possibility of a direct impact on fertility, particularly in relation to heatwaves, through physiological effects leading to childbearing postponement. The study also explores how socio-economic vulnerabilities, such as employment status and financial situation, may moderate this relationship. By utilizing longitudinal data that includes detailed socio-economic and demographic information, along with objective climate data, this research seeks to unpack the black box of the complex link between exposure to climate change and reproductive behaviours.