About

Sarah Hayford is a Professor and the Director of the Institute for Population Research at The Ohio State University. She studies family formation and reproductive health, primarily in the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. Her research focuses on how people make plans about family and health behaviors and who is able to carry out these plans. Current projects include research on trends in childbearing desires, intentions, and behaviors, as well as studies of reproductive health care access in Ohio. Outside of the U.S., she is working with a multidisciplinary team to collect survey data on women’s relationships with their adolescent and young adult children in rural Mozambique. Hayford's background includes a PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania and a MA in Demography from the same institution, along with a BA in Math & French from Amherst College. Her career began in applied public health, working on a project that helped manage family planning clinics in developing countries. This experience sparked her interest in understanding how demand for family planning services is measured and why women’s fertility preferences vary. Her research aims to answer fundamental questions about how individuals make decisions regarding family and health behaviors and how social structures influence or constrain these decisions. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, private foundations, and seed grants from OSU’s Department of Sociology.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Demography
• Geography
• Environmental health
• Social psychology
• Gender studies
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Socioeconomics
• Law
• Psychiatry
• Nursing
• Developmental psychology
• Gynecology
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Demographic economics

Selected publications

• Feelings About Abortion at Time of Care: Findings from an Ohio Abortion Facility

  UNC Libraries · 2026-02-22

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Mother–Child Religious Affiliation Discordance and Mother's Psychosocial Wellbeing in a Rural Sub‐Saharan Setting

  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · 2026-01-19

  articleOpen access

  Considerable scholarship has investigated connections between religious belonging and intergenerational family ties in high-income contexts. Building and expanding on this scholarship, we use data from a survey of middle-aged women in a predominantly Christian rural setting in Mozambique to examine religious affiliation discordance between these women and their adolescent/young adult children. We describe the patterning of this discordance both at the dyadic (mother-child) and at the aggregate (mother-children) levels and analyze its relationship with mother-child emotional connectedness and with mothers' life satisfaction and perceived quality of life. Results show that children's exit from organized religion, but not their transition to a different church, is negatively associated with these psychosocial outcomes. Importantly, gender-specific analyses indicate that these associations are statistically significant for sons but not for daughters. We link these findings to the gendered social meanings of religious belonging and the patriarchal cultural and family norms in this low-income context.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trends and Levels in Men’s and Women’s Fertility Goals in the United States

  Population Research and Policy Review · 2026-01-22

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Understanding trends in fertility goals (attitudes, desires, intentions, etc.), as well as variation by age and parity, is important for understanding current U.S. fertility and assessing likely future outcomes. Both men's and women's childbearing goals shape fertility behavior. However, most research on fertility goals focuses on women, and little is known about how men's fertility goals may have changed over time or vary by age and parity. In this paper, we draw from the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth 2011-2019 to estimate trends in age- and parity-specific indicators for both men and women of (i) the proportion of positive prospective fertility intentions, (ii) the timing of prospective fertility intentions, and (iii) the retrospective reporting of fertility desires. Results show important differences and similarities in men's and women's fertility goals, as well as a mixed picture regarding gender convergence or divergence in fertility goals, depending on the exact outcome analyzed. Men are more likely to intend a(nother) child and have greater intentions to delay childbearing, both at the aggregate and across age and parity. Prospective intentions declined for both men and women, but at a higher rate for women, and the declines were proportionally larger early in the life course. For both men and women, we find increases in intended childlessness and intentions to delay childbearing. These two processes together point to potential future declines in cohort fertility, both through unrealized fertility and voluntary childlessness. We conclude by discussing the benefits and challenges of including men in fertility research. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09989-5.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Feelings About Abortion at Time of Care: Findings from an Ohio Abortion Facility

  Sexuality Research and Social Policy · 2025-02-21

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multiple dimensions of uncertainty in fertility goals: recent trends and patterns in the United States

  Genus · 2025-06-02 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract A growing body of fertility research focuses on uncertainty as a key contributor to fertility decision making and behaviors. In this paper, we identify and describe multiple components of uncertainty in fertility goals that, when analyzed together and in relation to macro-level trends, provide critical insight into fertility dynamics. Drawing from multiple streams of research on fertility goals and behaviors, we focus on (i) goal uncertainty , (ii) realization uncertainty , and (iii) intensity of goals . We use data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) 2002–2019 to estimate trends and patterns of these three dimensions of uncertainty in fertility goals, with a focus on variation across the life course and inequality by education and income. We link uncertainty in fertility goals with the quantum and timing of fertility intentions among U.S. women. The results show that realization uncertainty is pervasive, with up to 50% of women who intend children being uncertain whether they will actually follow through with those intentions, and intensity of intentions is low, with up to 25% of childless women who intend children saying that they would not be bothered if they did not have a child. Although goal uncertainty is overall stable across the study period, young and childless women show increasing realization uncertainty over time and hold their positive intentions less intensely. More socioeconomically advantaged women exhibit higher realization certainty and greater intensity of their goals. Women who are more certain of realizing their positive intentions and those who hold them more intensely report a higher number of additional intended children and a shorter time frame for future childbearing. We conclude by situating these findings in a broader climate of increasing uncertainty.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Don’t Panic: Population Projection is Not a Crystal Ball

  2025-08-21

  articleOpen access

  Population panic – worries about “depopulation” linked to low birth rates – has become pervasive, with dire predictions in both the short and long term. Yet demographers like us – experts who explicitly study population size, composition, and structure – are generally not highly concerned. Why is this? It’s because we understand the strengths and limitations of population projections. Projections can accurately describe how populations will change if we know future birth, death, and migration rates. But demographers are well aware that they don’t have a crystal ball – we can't fully anticipate economic shifts, political changes, global events, or how future generations will respond to their changing worlds. That’s why the farther we project from the present, the less accurate those projections are likely to be.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Biological parenthood rates among men with sickle cell disease

  Blood Advances · 2025-09-09

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Feelings About Abortion at Time of Care: Findings from an Ohio Abortion Facility

  Open MIND · 2025-01-01

  article

• Parenthood and Women’s Subjective Well-being in a Low-income, High-fertility Context: A Case Study from Rural Gaza Province, Mozambique

  Population Research and Policy Review · 2025-10-31

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In rural high-fertility settings where people depend on subsistence agriculture, children are expected to provide material support to their parents in later life, with implications for physical health and material well-being of parents. Substantial research has examined these material consequences. Fewer studies have examined the implications of parenthood for subjective well-being in these contexts, in contrast to a larger body of research in low-fertility contexts. The existing studies of parenthood and subjective well-being in high-fertility contexts suggest that this relationship depends on parents' gender and age, but do not distinguish between the impact of parent life stage and the impact of child age and other child characteristics. In this study, we draw on data from a population-based survey of ever-married women in rural Gaza Province, Mozambique, to show how mid-life women's subjective well-being, measured as life satisfaction, is related to the number, age, and residential status of children. We also investigate whether the association between children's characteristics and mother's life satisfaction is mediated by other domains related to anticipated returns to childbearing, such as household economic conditions and mother's physical and mental health. Results show that having young children in the household is negatively associated with life satisfaction, while having older children living outside the country is positively associated with life satisfaction. These associations are not fully explained by potential mechanisms such as economic conditions. We reflect on the implications of these findings in a context of changing livelihood strategies. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09978-8.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evolving Fertility Goals and Behaviors in Current U.S. Childbearing Cohorts

  UNC Libraries · 2025-04-02

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In the post-Recession era, U.S. fertility rates have continued to fall. It is unclear if these declines are driven by shifts in fertility goals or growing difficulty in achieving goals. In this paper, we construct synthetic cohorts of men and women to examine both cross-cohort and within-cohort changes in fertility goals using multiple cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth. Although more recent cohorts exhibit lower achieved fertility at younger ages than earlier cohorts at the same age, intended parity remains around two children, and intentions to remain childless rarely exceed 15%. There is weak evidence of a growing fertility gap in the early 30s, suggesting more recent cohorts will need considerable childbearing in the 30s and early 40s to 'catch up' to earlier goals, yet low-parity women in their early 40s are decreasingly likely to have unfulfilled fertility desires or intentions to have children. Low-parity men in their early 40s, though, are increasingly likely to intend children. Declines in U.S. fertility thus seem to be largely driven not by changes in early-life fertility goals so much as either a decreasing likelihood of achieving earlier goals or, perhaps, shifts in the preferred timing of fertility that depress period measures.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes

  NIH · $9.9M · 2015–2022

• Distal Determinants of Disparities in Unintended Fertility

  NIH · $1.2M · 2014–2019

• NIH Grant R01HD058365

  NIH · $2.0M · 2014

• NIH Grant F32HD050032

  NIH · $88k · 2007

• NIH Grant R21HD086762

  NIH · $438k · 2019

Frequent coauthors

• Karen Benjamin Guzzo

  36 shared

• Victor Agadjanian

  University of California, Los Angeles

  23 shared

• Natalie Nitsche

  17 shared

• Alison H. Norris

  The Ohio State University

  7 shared

• Jennifer S. Barber

  Indiana University Bloomington

  6 shared

• Rose Grace Grose

  University of Northern Colorado

  6 shared

• Vanessa Wanner Lang

  Philipps University of Marburg

  5 shared

• S. Philip Morgan

  4 shared