Publications & Presentations

Ongoing and recent research can be found closer to the top of this page while completed or published research, with links, can be found farther down the page. Presentations or extracts are exemplars of the specific body of work; if you are interested in learning further about a specific line of work please reach out and email me at wright@demogr.mpg.de

Women of color experience a harder time conceiving, and a higher risk of losing, their desired pregnancies

Wright KQ, Hwang S, Green T, & Nobles J. (Under Review).

Fig 2a. Cumulative probability of conception by month 6 among people trying to achieve pregnancy, by age and racial categorization

Figure 1 displays our results estimating TTP across non-Hispanic White, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Black women in our sample over maternal ages 18-44. The cumulative probability of conceiving among women who are trying to become pregnant was ~.55 for non-Hispanic White women, ~.45 for Hispanic women and ~.4 for non-Hispanic Black women. Hispanic women are significantly less likely to conceive by 6 months than White women and Black women are significantly less likely to conceive than either White or Hispanic women, on the order of ~15 and 5 percent reduced probability. These differences translate into the decreased likelihood of Hispanic and Black women’s actual fertility meeting their stated fertility preferences. These differences also mean that if Hispanic and Black women were clinically diagnosed with infertility at the same rates as White women, infertility rates would likely be considerably higher for women of color.

Ideology Over Evidence: The Salience of Pronatalist Coverage in the Media and Its (Dis)connection from Fertility Trends in the United States

Wright KQ, Sanliturk A, Mann E. (Under Review).

Figure 2 GDELT Article Rates per 10,000 Articles, by Political Bias and Topic Theme, 2017-2024

Pronatalism — the ideology promoting increased birth rates as a political and civilizational imperative — has experienced a resurgence in United States media and policy discourse, yet scholars have long argued it functions as ideological framing rather than evidence-based demographic policy. This study tests that argument directly by examining whether empirical changes in fertility rates predict the rate and tone of pronatalism-adjacent media coverage across politically distinct United States outlets. Drawing on age- and race/ethnicity-specific fertility data, alongside article rates and tone data from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) over the period 2017-2024, we analyze the salience of three themes—fertility rates, population and demographic change, and aging populations—across 23 conservative, progressive, and neutral news outlets. Using linear regression models with year fixed effects, alongside model-specific indicators for secular shocks related to the 2020 and 2024 elections, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Dobbs decision, we find that changes in fertility rates do not significantly predict article volume for any outlet type or theme with one exception. Increases in the fertility rate among 35-44 year olds are associated with declines in coverage of the theme “Aging populations” among conservative outlets only. Results for tone demonstrate no significant relationship between changes in fertility rates and the tone of the different themes across conservative, progressive, and neutral media outlets. The most pronounced shifts in coverage and tone — particularly conservative outlets dramatically increased positive tones on Aging Population and progressive outlet’s increasingly negative tones across multiple themes leading up to the 2024 election — appear driven by electoral context rather than demographic reality. These findings provide quantitative support for the claim that media discourse selectively deploys demographic evidence in order to operate as an ideological regime of truth.

Immigration Background, Sending Region, & Inequalities in Family Formation Over the Life Course using Finnish Register Data

Trigos-Raczkowski Cǂ, Wright KQǂ*, Loi S, Pitkänen J, Martikainen P, & Myrskylä M. (Forthcoming). Timing of first formal romantic unions among 1st, 2nd, and 2.5 generations of immigrant women in Finland. International Migration Review.

Finnish women, by immigration origin, partnering pathways with men, by immigration origin

Immigrants and their descendants are increasingly forming families across Europe, yet little is known about how immigration background shapes first union entry in emerging immigration contexts. Here, we examine whether immigrant generation, age at arrival, and sending region are associated with entry into opposite-sex first unions for women in Finland from 1987 to 2020. Treating cohabitation and direct marriage as competing events, we estimate cause-specific hazards in separate accelerated failure time models. We find a systematic bifurcation in union entry: while nearly all immigrant groups forgo the modal Finnish path of first entering a nonmarital cohabitation, specific subgroups—including the second generation, first generation arriving during adolescence, and women from the Former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, North America, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa—exhibit accelerated transitions to direct marriage. While these findings demonstrate heterogeneity in the pathways by which immigrant women enter unions, with no single narrative of delay or convergence capturing the full picture, the overall pattern of later and less cohabitation and higher levels of direct marriage suggest that immigrant women face substantively different cultural, institutional, and social capital conditions than nonimmigrant women.

Inverted time ratios for time to cohabitation by generation and sending region, plotted with 95% confidence intervals. Reference categories are Non-immigrant Finns (generation panel) and Finland (region panel).

Inverted time ratios for time to direct marriage by generation and sending region, plotted with 95% confidence intervals. Reference categories are non-immigrant Finns (generation panel) and Finland (region panel).

Related Presentations:

Trigos-Raczkowski C et al. (2026). “Mental Healthcare Utilization in the Transition to Motherhood among Immigrants and their Descendants in Finland.” Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2026. Session 1303-1: Social and environmental stressors across the reproductive continuum. St. Louis, MA.

Wright KQ. (2025). “Generations and Geographies: Immigrant Women in Finland’s low Fertility Context.” MigrantLife Symposium. Oral Presentation. St. Andrews, Scotland

Wright KQ. (2025). “Diversification of Immigration Sending Countries over Recent Cohorts and the Impact on TFR in Finland.” European Association of Population Studies Working Group on Register-Based Fertility Research. Webinar: Recent Fertility Declines-What Can we Learn from Register-based Research? Invited Speaker. Online.

Wright KQ, Damiens J, Martikainen P, & Myrskylä M. (2025). “Geographical proximity to family members and family formation dynamics among people with immigrant backgrounds in Finland” Population Association of America Annual Meeting. Poster. Washington, D.C.

Wright KQ, Trigos-Raczkowski C, Loi S, Pitkänen J, Myrskylä M & Martikainen P. “The Contributions of the Fertility of Women with Immigrant Backgrounds to the Low Fertility Regime in Finland.”

  • Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2024. Poster. Columbus, OH.

  • European Population Conference 2024. Poster. Edinburgh, Scotland.

  • Fertility and Family Dynamics in Migrant and Minority Groups Conference 2023. European Association for Population Studies (EAPS) Working Group on Migrant and Minority Fertility in Europe. Wiesbaden, Germany.

Trigos-Raczkowski C, Wright KQ, Loi S, Pitkänen J, Myrskylä M & Martikainen P. “Contribution of a Couple’s Immigration Status to Union Formation and Dissolution in Finland”

  • Annual Conference of the Germany Society for Demography 2024. Session 1B: Union Formation and Dissolution in Central and Northern Europe. Hamburg, Germany.

  • Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2024. Poster. Columbus, OH.

  • European Population Conference 2024. Poster. Edinburgh, Scotland.

  • Fertility and Family Dynamics in Migrant and Minority Groups Conference 2023. European Association for Population Studies (EAPS) Working Group on Migrant and Minority Fertility in Europe. Wiesbaden, Germany.

Conceptualizing ubiquitous uncertainty in U.S. unemployment and fertility

In this study, we operationalize economic uncertainty as a component part of modern daily life (rather than as a shock or absolute value as has often been done in previous studies) and examine how it is related to age-specific fertility rates (ASFR). We do this by first generating estimates of month-year-FIPS-ASFRs in the United States. These ASFRs are estimated over a 17-year period for five-year age groups of women of reproductive age (15-44) using restricted* birth data and annual estimates of age and sex-specific populations. We measure economic uncertainty by generating monthly running averages of the standard deviations of unemployment rates over different time ranges starting at 9 months prior to calculated conception dates. These standard deviations are used to estimate age-group stratified multilevel longitudinal generalized linear models, where ASFRs are predicted by the average standard deviation of the unemployment rate for durations of 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months starting at 9 months prior to conception. In our preliminary results, we find a significant and positive relationship between increased variability in monthly unemployment rates in U.S. counties and ASFRs for women under 25-years old. This relationship attenuates among older groups of women. Additionally, we see that short-term economic uncertainty has a different relationship with fertility than long term economic uncertainty, a phenomena which should be further explored by age, race, and educational status.

 *Data shown in the 2023 PAA presentation is using public use birth data.

Wright KQ & Myrskylä M. “Conceptualizing ubiquitous uncertainty in US Unemployment and Fertility.”

  • The Inequality of Uncertainty Conference, 2023. Poster. Università di Bologna.

  • Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies (SLLS) Annual Conference 2023. Session 5E: Young lives, family and parenting. Munich, Germany.

  • Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2023. Poster. New Orleans, LA.

“It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID-19 pandemic

Wright, KQ. (2022). “It changed the atmosphere surrounding the baby I did have”: Making sense of reproduction during the COVID-19 pandemic using heteronormative, affective, and medical schemas. Journal of Marriage and Family. 84(4), 1105-1128.

In this study, I show how individuals use specific schemas in a time of prolonged social upheaval to maintain, reassess, or relinquish their expectations for reproductive experiences. Despite a robust body of literature that quantitatively describes population fertility responses to crises—both long and short—we know less about how individuals make sense of their reproductive experiences within these scenarios. In this study, I use a unique qualitative dataset—29 in-depth interviews with women of reproductive age interviewed 7-8 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, prior to the development of a successful vaccine—to offer insights into the research question: “How do adult women make sense of their reproductive experiences in the context of prolonged uncertainty?” In exploring women’s narratives, I show how the material experience of the pandemic reveals the heteronormative, affective, and medical schemas that women use to normatively make sense of reproduction. I demonstrate that these schemas have real consequences for experiences of reproduction.

Related Presentations:

  • Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Regular Presenter. 2021 Conference on: Pandemic Babies? The COVID-19 Pandemic and its Impact on Fertility and Family Dynamics. Berlin, Germany.

  • American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting 2021, Section on Medical Sociology, Session: Reproductive Experiences and Decision-making. Virtual.

  • Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) Annual Meeting 2021, Session: COVID-19 and Families. Virtual.

  • Population Association of America 2021 Meeting, Session 825: Infectious Disease and Reproductive Health. Virtual.

Contraceptive Selection and Practice: Associations with Self-Identified Race and Socioeconomic Disadvantage

Wright, KQ. 2020. Contraceptive Selection and Practice: Associations with Self-Identified Race and Socioeconomic Disadvantage. Social Science and Medicine. 266:113366.

Fig. 2. a,b: Predicted probability of discontinuing across all methods by self-identified Race/Ethnicity, Disadvantage quartile, and survey wave; Predicted probability of discontinuing by chosen method, self-identified Race/Ethnicity, Disadvantage quartile, and survey wave.

Many researchers and policymakers have linked contraceptive programs to improvements in women’s and children’s socioeconomic outcomes. However, these studies have overlooked how socioeconomic status may be an initial driver of contraceptive choice and behavior. Here, I examine the relationship between a comprehensive measure of socioeconomic disadvantage, self-identified race, and contraceptive method selection at enrollment in a unique longitudinal study of contraceptive clients who received a new type of method at no cost. I then examine whether socioeconomic disadvantage has an association with contraceptive switching or discontinuation. These findings offer an important insight for implementation in contraceptive programs: eliminating financial barriers to access contraceptive services does not eliminate the socioeconomic contexts that influence method selection and use that occur as part of everyday lived experiences. Taken cumulatively, these results suggest that contraceptive services should be offered to women in ways that ensure access to reproductive justice without obscuring the need for social changes in the institutions that create disadvantage and shape contraceptive use itself.

Related Presentations:

  •  “Socioeconomic status and psychological well-being as predictors of sexual satisfaction.” American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting 2020. Invited submission for Panel on Sexual Pleasure and Intimacy Work. Berkeley/Virtual.

  • “Socioeconomic disadvantage and contraceptive stratification: Evidence from the HER Salt Lake Study on contraceptive choice and practice.” Population Association of America 2019 Meeting, Session 149: Contraceptive Use in the United States. Austin.

A Rapid Review on Pleasure at First Sexual Encounter. (Equal Authorship with Victoria Boydell, Consultancy for the Durex Global Advisory Board)

Boydell V, Wright KQ, and Smith RD. 2021. A Rapid Review on Pleasure at First Sexual Encounter(s). The Journal of Sex Research. 58(7),850-862.

While researchers have thoroughly studied the who, what, and when of first sexual experiences, we know much less about how people construct, experience, and proceed (or not) with sexual pleasure in first sexual experiences and beyond. To address this knowledge gap, the Global Advisory Board for Sexual Health and Wellbeing (GAB) coordinated a rapid review of the existing literature. We have conducted a rapid review of published peer-reviewed research to determine what is currently known about sexual pleasure in first sexual experiences. We found 23 papers exploring a wide range of topics related to this subject and its intersections with sexual health and sexual rights. The results of this review reveal significant gaps in erotic education, gender equity, vulnerability and connection, and communication efficacy, and highlight important domains to consider in future research. Our findings suggest that sexual education programs that promote erotic pedagogy may be effective for promoting health and enjoyable and consensual first sexual experiences.

Understanding the measurement of human rights and person-centered principles in abortion and contraceptive care using systematic review methodology

Global efforts to increase access to sexual and reproductive health services have proliferated over the last 60 years. There is still a long way before these services are offered in a manner that respects, protects, and fulfils patients’ rights. One barrier is the inability to measure whether services respect and protect rights. In this work, we used systematic review methods to identify measures of human rights and person-centrered principles applied in assessing the provision of abortion and contraceptive care. First, we explore how intention-to-use contraception may actually better predict demand compared to traditional measures. In unpublished work, we identified measures pertaining to 15 themes (acceptability; accessibility; autonomy; availability; communication; dignity; non-discrimination; informed decision-making; legality; privacy and confidentiality; quality; quality of life; participation; satisfaction; social support; supportive care; and trust). Specific dimensions received more attention than others, particularly quality of care and informed choice, which have had a historical focus within sexual and reproductive health services. Other dimensions, like communication and informed choice, were validated more frequently across sites, while many dimensions are idiosyncratically measured based off of historical precedents. Renewed efforts to measure human rights and person-centered principles in sexual and reproductive health services should focus on consistent, reliable, and valid measurement to ensure rights.

Boydell V, Wright KQ, Einakib S, & Galavotti C. (2024). Toward person-centred measures of contraceptive demand: A systematic review of the relationship between intentions to use and actual use of contraception. Gates Open Research, 8:1.

Wright KQ and Boydell V. A review of the measurement of human rights in global sexual and reproductive health research using systematic review methodology.

Intersectional Inequalities in Conception & Birth Outcomes in the United States

Environmental Exposures: We know that environmental and institutional inequalities are intrinsically related to racial inequality in the U.S., whether through the inability to move to an environmentally secure geographic area, through differential access to resources during environmental crises, systematic and historical discrimination via red-lining, etc.. To integrate a reproductive, ecological, and environmental justice perspective, we use multiple data sources, including restricted-use birth record data, high resolution meteorologic data, data from the Consumer Protection Bureau, and proprietary app data to predict disadvantages in conception and birth outcomes.

Related Presentations:

Wright KQ & Conte-Keivabu R, & Vachuska K. (2023). “Exposure to extreme heat and intersectional inequalities in preterm and low birthweight births.” Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2023. Poster. New Orleans, LA.

Wright KQ. (2022). “Changes in Black-White time-to-conception under varying scenarios over the next 50 years: The role of compositional change due to climate.” Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2022. Session 823: Stratified Reproduction and Reproductive Justice. Atlanta, GA.

Nobles J, Green T, and Wright KQ. “Structural Racism and Black Reproduction in the U.S.” Population Association of America 2021 Meeting, Session 1017: Structural Racism and Health. Virtual.

Forging Silver Bullets: Linking unintended pregnancy, poverty, and race as political fact

In this study I investigate the discursive strategies employed in two congressional hearings focused on pregnancy in welfare reform. I use historical discourse analysis and the concept of governmentality to frame how various actors in these hearings articulate and validate problem statements, use facts and evidence to support or challenge their versions of the issues, and propose solutions that are alternatively preventative or punitive. The hearings frame pregnancy and welfare as interconnected "problems" linked to societal decline and child harm, with suggested solutions ranging from preventive to punitive measures. The construction of these problems in these hearings is distinctly gendered and racialized, with discourses about social decline using the language of cultural racism to describe young, single, mothers as responsible for a decline in morality and young fathers as lacking accountability. Throughout the hearings, speakers utilize narratives of welfare pregnancies causing harm to children to present their proposed policies as the “kindest” or “most compassionate.” The findings highlight that policymaking process in welfare reform tends to rely on a normative portrayal of a White, middle-class, heterosexual, consumption-based family unit, regardless of evidence presented to the contrary. This raises concerns about the assumption that scientific facts will be readily accepted and taken up by congressional committee members, as evidence suggests that lawmakers often prioritize opinions, anecdotes, and evidence that align with their preferred policymaking approaches while discrediting or discarding alternative perspectives.

Related Presentations:

Wright KQ. (2020). “Unintended Pregnancy and Contraceptive Programs and Policies As Poverty Regulation Devices in the U.S.: A Genealogy.” European Association for the Study of Science and Technology/Society for the Social Studies of Science Joint Conference 2020. Prague/Virtual.

 

Earlier Research

Additional publications on contraceptive acceptability from the HER Salt Lake Contraceptive Initiative

Additional publications on human rights and patient-centered principles in global sexual and reproductive service delivery

Other work on contraception and sexual and reproductive health