Association of family structure with gain and loss of household headship among older adults in India: Analysis of panel data

Shobhit Srivastava; Muhammad Thalil; Rashmi Rashmi; Ronak Paul

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0252722

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 3, 2020
1 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Srinivas Goli, Editor PONE-D-20-38024 Association of Family Structure with Gain and Loss of Household Headship among Older Adults of India: Analysis of Panel Data PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Paul, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Revise and Resubmit. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 16 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Considering the reviewers opinion, I am going with a decision of major revision. I have following suggestions. Please include a variable in the background characteristics that number of married adults in the family and the number of unmarried adults and children in the family. Bring some sociological or family demography literature on why and when headship transition in the households takes place and whether your analyses are supporting or rejecting those literature and hypothesis? Also, can you cut-down the length of headings in the manuscript and Tables. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This article addresses the important topic the association of family structure with gain and loss of household headship among older adults of India from the panel data of IHDS wave-I and wave-II. The outcome indicators for the study was the gain in headship and loss in headship with other explanatory and control variables. Authors have concluded that the loss of household headship was significantly associated with the changes in the family structure. The results of the multivariate analysis found that older adults from economically poor background and older adults with chronic disease conditions had higher chances of losing headship. Although, the paper has some limitations. Here some broad suggestions: 1. Page no. 8 (208-209) Authors have mentioned that they have found the interaction effect of marital status, income, education level and household BPL status. But, did not find any explanation behind it. Authors would have added table for the changes in the characteristics of older adults in both rounds of data sets which are directly affecting the household headship status like marital status, working status and Household BPL status. The interaction effect of these variables can be looked up. The work status and marital status decides the living arrangement of older adults, and living arrangement affects the household headship status. If any older adults who was not in poor in wave-I but entered in poor (BPL) category or vice-versa, this can affect the work status of the older adults. 2. Page no. 7 (164-167). The categorization of marital status variable is not clear. It can be written in more clear way. 3. Page no. 17-18. In the discussion section, culture of the Indian society can be discussed more in term of voluntary transfer of headship to their economically active sons. Minor comment 1. Page no. 16. ® Symbol can be assigned against the reference category in the table 3 as mentioned in note. Reviewer #2: The authors conclude that the loss or gain of headship was associated with changes in the family structure but their analysis does not reflect this. The multivariate results primarily show the odds of gaining or losing headship status given that one belongs to a particular family type but do not analyze whether the gain or loss can be attributed to a change in family type. For instance, the older person might have lost headship due to a change from nuclear to joint/extended family. It is unclear the reason for using characteristics in wave I when these might have changed in wave II. Maybe it is an issue with how it has been conceptualized. Can authors explain this? For the multivariate analysis, authors could consider running two models for each of the outcomes. The first model could contain only the primary factors - family type - since it is the main association authors wish to test. The second model will then account for the effect of control variables. The odds ratio and CI can be reported in one column (in order to get enough space for the two models). Also, authors could indicate in the table the reference category for the independent variables as Ref or 1.00. Using ® (which did not appear at all in table 3) is somehow non-academic. In table 3, square brackets should be used instead when reporting CIs. Also, authors should use a comma instead of "dash". eg. [0.67, 1.40] Under the statistical methods, can authors explain their reason for testing interactions? in my opinion, there may not be a need to write on interactions. This is because the objective of this study was not to investigate the interactions between specific variables. line 227 - .. wave I increased instead of "were increased". line 236 - authors could consider using "no formal education or no formal schooling" instead of no schooling education Authors could also briefly explain how the limitations link to their study. For instance, how is the non inclusion of the dependency status of the son a limitation for this study. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: review report.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252722.r001
Revision 1
8 Apr 2021 Author Response Reviewer’s Comment Reviewer #1: This article addresses the important topic the association of family structure with gain and loss of household headship among older adults of India from the panel data of IHDS wave-I and wave-II. The outcome indicators for the study was the gain in headship and loss in headship with other explanatory and control variables. Authors have concluded that the loss of household headship was significantly associated with the changes in the family structure. The results of the multivariate analysis found that older adults from economically poor background and older adults with chronic disease conditions had higher chances of losing headship. Although, the paper has some limitations. Here some broad suggestions: 1. Page no. 8 (208-209) Authors have mentioned that they have found the interaction effect of marital status, income, education level and household BPL status. But, did not find any explanation behind it. Authors would have added table for the changes in the characteristics of older adults in both rounds of data sets which are directly affecting the household headship status like marital status, working status and Household BPL status. The interaction effect of these variables can be looked up. The work status and marital status decides the living arrangement of older adults, and living arrangement affects the household headship status. If any older adults who was not in poor in wave-I but entered in poor (BPL) category or vice-versa, this can affect the work status of the older adults. Response: Dear reviewer, thank you very much for pointing this out. However, keeping in mind the comment given by the editor and reviewer #2 we have refrained from examining interaction effects further. However, we have included this point as a scope for further research in the “Discussion” section (Page 20, line 380-382). 2. Page no. 7 (164-167). The categorization of marital status variable is not clear. It can be written in more clear way. Response: Thank you for the suggestion. Accordingly, we have modified the line to (Page 7, line 167-169): “Individuals who were “single”, “widowed”, “separated/divorced”, “spouse absent” and “no gauna” were recoded into the “Not currently married” category; otherwise, they were included in the “Currently married” category.” 3. Page no. 17-18. In the discussion section, culture of the Indian society can be discussed more in term of voluntary transfer of headship to their economically active sons. Response: comment incorporated (Line no. 323-327) Minor comment 1. Page no. 16. ® Symbol can be assigned against the reference category in the table 3 as mentioned in note. Response: Thank you very much for pointing this out. We have denoted the reference category in Table 3 by assigning the symbol (Ref). Reviewer #2: The authors conclude that the loss or gain of headship was associated with changes in the family structure but their analysis does not reflect this. The multivariate results primarily show the odds of gaining or losing headship status given that one belongs to a particular family type but do not analyze whether the gain or loss can be attributed to a change in family type. For instance, the older person might have lost headship due to a change from nuclear to joint/extended family. Response: Dear sir, Thank you for the very important insight. I completely agree with your comment. I have rephrased the first line of conclusion. (Line no. 388-389) 1. It is unclear the reason for using characteristics in wave I when these might have changed in wave II. Maybe it is an issue with how it has been conceptualized. Can authors explain this? Response: We agree that characteristics such as marital status, household wealth quintile, and household BPL status might change between round-I and round-II. However, our objective is to check whether the characteristics in round-I were associated with the change in household headship status between round-II. Accordingly, the study has been conceptualized. In the present study we just tried to find the predictors of loss or gain of headship among older adults. 2. For the multivariate analysis, authors could consider running two models for each of the outcomes. The first model could contain only the primary factors - family type - since it is the main association authors wish to test. The second model will then account for the effect of control variables. The odds ratio and CI can be reported in one column (in order to get enough space for the two models). Also, authors could indicate in the table the reference category for the independent variables as Ref or 1.00. Using ® (which did not appear at all in table 3) is somehow non-academic. In table 3, square brackets should be used instead when reporting CIs. Also, authors should use a comma instead of "dash". e.g. [0.67, 1.40] Response: We agree with the reviewer’s suggestion. Therefore, keeping in mind the editor’s and the reviewer’s suggestion regarding formatting of Table 3 we have denoted CI within square brackets separated by a comma in between. Further, reference category for independent variables has been shown using Ref. As per your suggestion, we considered running two separate models with the first model showing the bivariate association of family type in round-I with headship change between round-I and round-II and the second model accounting for the effect of control variables. We humbly point out that bivariate association has of family type in round-I with headship change between round-I and round-II has already been examined in Table 2. Evidently, we did not repeat the same in Table 3. 3. Under the statistical methods, can authors explain their reason for testing interactions? in my opinion, there may not be a need to write on interactions. This is because the objective of this study was not to investigate the interactions between specific variables. Response: Dear reviewer, thank you for pointing this out. Accordingly, we have omitted the section for testing of interactions in the revised manuscript. 4. line 227 - ... wave I increased instead of "were increased". Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We have corrected the sentence to (Page 9, line 223-224): As shown in figure 2, the percentage of older adults who were residing in a single generation household in wave-I increased to nearly 6% in wave-II. 5. line 236 - authors could consider using "no formal education or no formal schooling" instead of no schooling education. Response: Thank you for pointing this out. We have corrected the sentence to (Page 10, line 232): Further, 67% of older adults were married, 60% had no formal education and 85% were unemployed during wave-I. 6. Authors could also briefly explain how the limitations link to their study. For instance, how is the non-inclusion of the dependency status of the son a limitation for this study. Response: Comment incorporated. (Line 375-386) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252722.r002
11 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Srinivas Goli, Editor PONE-D-20-38024R1 Association of Family Structure with Gain and Loss of Household Headship among Older Adults in India: Analysis of Panel Data PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Paul, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Dear Authors, I have asked you to include some variables in the background characteristics: ‘the number of married, unmarried adults and children in the family. Without understanding the age and marital status composition of other household members, it is difficult to explain why and when headship transition takes place in families. In general, the marriage of children is the first break-point for older adult headship. What kind of headship loss you’re talking about for single-person older households, whom he/she is heading. What do you understand by headship? I think you need to put some logic while planning the analyses. Also, this paper is still silent on the question that what had happened between the waves that an older adult has to give up his/her headship? IHDS allows adding such variables. Also, bring some sociological or family demography literature on why and when headship transition in the households takes place and whether your analyses are supporting or rejecting that hypotheses? Also, can you cut down the length of headings in the manuscript and Tables? If you feel these suggestions are not relevant to your paper, please respond to them. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 26 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Srinivas Goli, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Dear Authors, I have asked you to include some variables in the background characteristics: ‘the number of married, unmarried adults and children in the family. Without understanding the age and marital status composition of other household members, it is difficult to explain why and when headship transition takes place in families. In general, the marriage of children is the first break-point for older adult headship. What kind of headship loss you’re talking about for single-person older households, whom he/she is heading. What do you understand by headship? I think you need to put some logic while planning the analyses. Also, this paper is still silent on the question that what had happened between the waves that an older adult has to give up his/her headship? Due to death of a male partner, by default female become head in a two member family, is consider as gaining headship? IHDS allows adding such variables. Also, bring some sociological or family demography literature on why and when headship transition in the households takes place and whether your analyses are supporting or rejecting that hypotheses? Also, can you cut down the length of headings in the manuscript and Tables? If you feel these suggestions are not relevant to your paper, please respond to them. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252722.r003
Revision 2
15 Apr 2021 Author Response MANUSCRIPT TITLE: Association of Family Structure with Gain and Loss of Household Headship among Older Adults in India: Analysis of Panel Data SUBJECT: Response to reviewers Respected editor, Thank you for giving us the opportunity of submitting an improved version of our manuscript for publication in the PLOS One. We are highly grateful to receive your insightful comments and suggestions. We appreciate the time and effort that you have put forward to provide valuable feedback that has significantly improved our paper. Kindly note that we have incorporated the changes that were suggested. The modifications have been shown using track changes within the revised manuscript. Please see below for a point-by-point response to each of the comments and suggestions. Hoping that you and your family members are safe and sound in these challenging times, Yours Sincerely, Authors Editor’s Comments: 1. Dear Authors, I have asked you to include some variables in the background characteristics: ‘the number of married, unmarried adults and children in the family. Without understanding the age and marital status composition of other household members, it is difficult to explain why and when headship transition takes place in families. In general, the marriage of children is the first break-point for older adult headship. Response: Dear editor thank you for the suggestion. We have included variables showing the number of married adults, number of unmarried adults and number of children in the family, in our analysis. Accordingly, the “Data and methods”, “Results” and “Discussion” section and the tables have been updated. 2. What kind of headship loss you’re talking about for single-person older households, whom he/she is heading. What do you understand by headship? I think you need to put some logic while planning the analyses. Response: Dear sir, we are not considering single-person older households. For the headship to be loosed, at least 2 persons should reside in a single household. Secondly, headship means the person who is heading the household, taking all the major decisions. In the large-scale survey, we generally ask all the household information from the household head only. Therefore, the dynamics of headship in IHDS-1 and IHDS-2 was observed from the present analysis. 3. Also, this paper is still silent on the question that what had happened between the waves that an older adult has to give up his/her headship? IHDS allows adding such variables. Response: Dear editor, thank you for pointing this out. Kindly note that in this paper we aim to analyse the association of family structure and other explanatory variables in wave-I with their change in headship status between wave-I and wave-II. The same has also been pointed out by Reviewer #2. We do not try to answer the question that what had happened between the waves that an older adult has to give up his/her headship. We know that using the “IHDS tracking sheet” we can determine whether an older adult died or was untraceable between round-I and round-II. Since we are using the panel data, it effectively means that we are analysing only those adults who were alive and traceable by IHDS staff after wave-I and during wave-II. Further, we have already noted the following in our manuscript (Page 5, line 114-117): During IHDS wave-I, there were 17,906 individuals, aged 60 years and above, whom we refer to as older adults in this study. Among them, 4,736 older adults were not alive and 2,643 older adults were lost to follow-up during wave-II. Thus, our current study is based on panel data of 10,527 older adults. 4. Also, bring some sociological or family demography literature on why and when headship transition in the households takes place and whether your analyses are supporting or rejecting that hypotheses? Response: Comment incorporated. 5. Also, can you cut down the length of headings in the manuscript and Tables? Response: Thank you. We have shortened the length of headings in the manuscript and tables. 6. If you feel these suggestions are not relevant to your paper, please respond to them. Response: Dear editor, on a contrary note we believe that all the suggestions given by you have improved our manuscript by leaps and bounds. Therefore, we have carefully studied, incorporated and then responded to each of them. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252722.r004
21 May 2021 Decision Letter - Srinivas Goli, Editor Association of Family Structure with Gain and Loss of Household Headship among Older Adults in India: Analysis of Panel Data PONE-D-20-38024R2 Dear Dr. Paul, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Srinivas Goli, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Revisions are acceptable but authors have to send a clean version after incorporating two final suggestions: 1. Remove track changes and read the paper carefully for language, grammar, typos and syntax. 2. I am giving additional reference of a paper that recently published. Can you contextualise your paper topic in a broader family demographic literature. Add two or three lines in limitations what kind of data is needed in future to study demographic issues in family perspective. This helps your to live beyond the life span of IHDS round 1 and 2. Chakravorty S, Goli S, James KS. Family Demography in India: Emerging Patterns and Its Challenges. SAGE Open. 2021 Apr;11(2):21582440211008178. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252722.r005
Formally Accepted
27 May 2021 Acceptance Letter - Srinivas Goli, Editor PONE-D-20-38024R2 Association of Family Structure with Gain and Loss of Household Headship among Older Adults in India: Analysis of Panel Data Dear Dr. Paul: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Srinivas Goli Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252722.r006

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