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Using data for 555,038 pregnancies conceived in the Czech Republic in 1987-1990, we show that pronounced differences in fetal survival in the middle trimester of pregnancy by marital status, educational level, and labor force attachment become much smaller at full term; survival differences by age at conception and number of previous deliveries show relatively constant proportional hazards throughout gestation. Social inequalities in postpartum life chances have been documented previously, but we show that similar inequalities exist before birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from a nationally representative sample of Swedish couples to estimate effects of partners' childbearing plans on the rate of subsequent childbearing. Only 11% of the couples in this sample expressed plans in opposite directions (plan to have a child versus not to have a child), but 24% had differing levels of certainty about their plans. Of the couples in which both partners said they definitely planned to have another child, 44% had a child within two years. If neither partner planned to have another child, less than 2% of couples had a birth. The figure was 6% if the partners had opposing childbearing plans. Thus, both men and women exerted veto power over further childbearing. Disagreements were equally likely to be resolved in favor of the woman as of the man, and effects of partners' plans on the birth hazard did not depend on the couple's gender arrangements, family ideologies, or marital status. We discuss these results in the context of Sweden's public support for gender equality and for childrearing, its pervasive contraceptive regime, and its high rates of cohabitation. We also argue for the collection of data from partners in future family and fertility surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the influence of premarital cohabitation on marital fertility by applying life table methods to data for cohorts of Danish women born in 1926-1955, collected in retrospective interviews made in 1975. For each five-year cohort, the data have been analyzed by duration of marriage or by duration since previous birth, for women who had no reported births before marriage. Our main empirical results are: (a) that women who married at age 15-19 had higher rates of marital first and second births than those married at ages 20-24, and (b) that premarital cohabitation had very little influence on births of these two first orders in our data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In retrospective studies of individual life histories, some or all of the information pertaining to periods prior to the latest event interval of interest will sometimes be left out. This simplifies data collection, and it may improve the reliability of the data actually obtained by reducing misreporting. Unfortunately, it may also introduce serious distortion in estimates based on such data. This paper investigates the extent of such distortion in a retrospective study of nonmarital cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing when information on consensual unions is restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the outcome of an exercise in curve fitting to annual sets of Danish age-specific fertility rates for the years 1962 to 1971 by means of least squares. Functions fitted were a cubic spline, the Hadwiger and Coale-Trussell functions, the gamma and beta densities, two versions of a polynomial, and two of Brass's relational procedures, as well as the Gompertz curve. The spline function fitted all curves far better than any of the others. The Coale-Trussell procedure and gamma density were about equal, followed by the Hadwiger function. All of these functions fit the data wells. One of the polynomials fit reasonably well, but the rest of the functions were less accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some main results of an investigation by life table methods of birth interval data in cohabitational unions (marriages as well as consensual unions) in current Danish cohorts. Our results confirm previous findings that an early age at the start of recorded exposure to childbearing risk is indicative of a rapid pace and high level of subsequent fertility. The analysis modifies previous results and adds several new details regarding cohort trends and the effect of parity at the start of reported cohabitation. For each parity within a period of cohabitation, fertility differentials by reported starting age seem to have diminished from our older cohorts (of age up to 49 years in 1975) to our younger ones (of age less than 30 years in 1975). There are indications of a dramatic change in childbearing behaviour following the arrival of novel attitudes to non-marital cohabitation and childbearing in Denmark about 1967. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on articles by R. Schoen and V. Nelson, published recently in the periodical "Demography." Schoen and Nelson discuss the construction of what they call increment-decrement life tables. Their treatment is quite elementary, but the reader is given the impression that they are plowing new ground. Indeed, Schoen and Nelson state that to their knowledge, the literature does not contain any thorough and systematic discussion of how to deal with life tables that have entrants as well as exits, particularly when re-entry into a table is permitted. In a working paper published by the Central Bureau of Statistics of Norway in 1968, the author gave a more complete discussion of the problems investigated in the paper by Schoen and Nelson. In fact, discussions of the kind unknown to Schoen and Nelson appeared in the actuarial literature at least as early as 1912 in the literature on statistical methods in the study of public health no later than 1951.