PRB

In the U.S., four out of five Latino adults—38.5 million people—are part of the working class, powering essential industries like construction, agriculture, and hospitality.

In a new research series, PRB and UnidosUS are exploring the characteristics of this group, offering insights to inform policies that expand economic opportunity. The inaugural report looks at the demographic profile of working-class Latinos, including age, race, gender, generational status, and education level, as well as differences across states.

The Demographics of African Faculty in the East African Community (DAF-EAC) is a study undertaken by a consortium comprised of the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), Education Sub Saharan Africa (ESSA), the Association of African Universities (AAU), and the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). DAF-EAC follows the initial study on Demographics of African Faculty in Ghana, which provided important demographic data and identified challenges concerning faculty in the country.

DAF-EAC sought to assess the status of Higher Education faculty in the East African region in terms of numbers, distribution by gender and areas of study. The study comprised four components namely; background research, analysis of current and future faculty demand, stakeholder engagement and dissemination of study findings, and co-creation of solutions to address the faculty challenges. The study was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (grant number G-21-58066), focusing on six Partner States of the East African Community, namely Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Higher education data management covers a broad range of information, including students, faculty, other staff, research and development, facilities, and financial resources. This document presents two complementary sets of indicators—student indicators and faculty indicators—designed to support consistent data collection and analysis within higher education systems. These indicators are intended to inform planning, monitoring, and decision-making, with a particular emphasis on understanding and addressing faculty staffing needs, a core objective of the Demographics of African Faculty (DAF) project.

In June 2024, the MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator Project, FP2030, and the William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (the Organizing Committee) jointly hosted a convening, “Centering Locally-Driven Family Planning Measurement Priorities in the Global Measurement Agenda,” in Nairobi, Kenya. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the convening aimed to elevate the voices of country-based family planning (FP) actors in the global FP measurement discourse. From June 25–27, over 50 program implementers, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officers, statistical officers, and local researchers from 22 countries came together to discuss challenges, gaps, emerging approaches, and technical assistance needs in FP measurement at the global, national, subnational, and community levels. The Nairobi convening is designed to serve as a launch-point for an ongoing effort to advance FP measurement through multidirectional learning and exchange between country and global stakeholders, the FP Measurement Advancement Convening Series, or “FP-MACS.”

In this March 4, 2025 webinar, three researchers discussed how social media and new technologies may enhance—or limit—social connectedness and emotional well-being among older adults.

• Karen L. Fingerman (University of Texas at Austin) focused on the relationships between social media use, social ties, and emotional well-being in later life.
• Ellen L. Compernolle (NORC at the University of Chicago) summarized research on loneliness among older adults from Chicago during and before the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Steven W. Cole (University of California at Los Angeles) described how in-person and virtual social environments influenced gene expression during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This webinar was hosted by PRB and the Coordinating Center for the Centers on the Demography and Economics of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias, with funding from the National Institute on Aging.

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PRB created The KIDS COUNT Data Resource Guide to facilitate the use of population data from the U.S. federal statistical system. Originally designed for the KIDS COUNT program on child well-being, the guide offers practical advice on how to use major data sources—from the Decennial U.S. Census to the National Vital Statistics System—that could be helpful to anyone who works with U.S. population data.

The guide includes an overview of each major data source, including what data are available, how to access that data, and some best practices for using each source. These sources provide up-to-date and reliable information that is comparable across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and, where available, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Data sources covered by the guide include:

• Decennial Census
• U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program
• American Community Survey
• Current Population Survey
• National Vital Statistics System
• National Survey of Children’s Health
• Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates
• Small Area Health Insurance Estimates
• National Center for Education Statistics
• And more

The KIDS COUNT Data Resource Guide also includes a brief overview of best practices that apply across data sources, such as assessing reliability, making comparisons, and disaggregating by race and ethnicity.

U.S. society and policy disproportionately burden women with unpaid (or underpaid) caregiving responsibilities. In her new book “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net,” author Jessica Calarco (University of Wisconsin-Madison) draws on five years of research to show how thinly stretched American women are.

In June 2024, PRB convened an expert panel to discuss Calarco’s key findings and their implications for reproductive health care policy and explore additional research on abortion, contraception, fertility, gender, and motherhood. Calarco was joined by Tiffany Green (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Karen Benjamin Guzzo (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and Jocelyn Foye (The Womxn Project), and nearly 200 attendees.

Women in the United States are often the primary caregivers for children, older parents, and others, even when they have full-time jobs, and even when men could share in the care work. This gender gap in caregiving can have significant negative economic consequences for women, especially when that work is unpaid or underpaid. Coupled with complex and inaccessible social safety net programs, the caregiving burden can limit women’s career opportunities, reduce women’s earnings potential, and increase financial hardship for women and their families.

Systemic inequality and discrimination have taken a financial, physical, and emotional toll on marginalized groups, such as Black women, Indigenous women, Hispanic and Latina women, disabled women, and transgender women. For example, Dr. Green shared that the practice of birth cost recovery (also referred to as the “birth tax”) in Wisconsin disproportionately affects Black families and creates financial burdens for fathers, hindering their ability to participate in their children’s lives.

U.S. policies have historically burdened women with caregiving responsibilities and offered limited protections compared with other nations. When asked “What can be done?”, panelists offered suggestions based on their research:

• Invest in policies that provide adequate support for caregivers, including affordable childcare, paid family leave, and health care.
• Design policies and programs to address the specific needs of women of color, who often face additional barriers to economic opportunity and social mobility.
• Invest in women’s health, including reproductive health care, which can improve women’s well-being and reduce the burden of caregiving.
• Challenge traditional gender roles and expectations that place the primary burden of caregiving on women.
• Conduct additional research to better understand the experiences of caregivers and to inform policy decisions.

By addressing the systemic challenges faced by caregivers, we can create a more economically vibrant, equitable, and healthy society.

This analysis presents a compilation of early learnings from experiences with MOMENTUM support in Indonesia, Mali, Nepal, and Nigeria, each of which has engaged with national and subnational partners in planning for and/or implementing improved SSNC. In some cases, country governments and their maternal and newborn health partners have worked to adapt, test, and adjust the global WHO-UNICEF Comprehensive Model for Scaling up Care for SSNBs in district hospitals based on their local contexts; in others, the work to develop a country-specific model of care began prior to the release of the global guidance. The purpose of this report is to present common approaches used in the early stages of implementation of the 10 core components in this diverse set of MOMENTUM countries, along with emerging challenges and learnings.