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This paper compares the sexual and reproductive experiences and intentions of those adolescents aged 15-19 years in Uganda who are perinatally infected with HIV and know their sero-status with those of adolescents who do not know their sero-status. The analysis comprises a simple comparison of means and proportions, together with the relevant tests of significance, as well as estimation of Cox proportional hazards and random-effects logit models. The findings show that the two groups of adolescents do not differ significantly in terms of timing of sexual debut and whether they intend to have children in the future. However, adolescents who are HIV-positive and know their status are significantly more likely to use a modern method of contraception, including condoms. Nonetheless, the level of condom use among these adolescents is still limited (less than half of those sexually active) and inconsistent (less than half of those in relationships reported always using a condom). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents estimates of the level and trend of the fertility of different ethnic minorities in the UK from the 1960s up to 2006. The fertility estimates are derived primarily from the Labour Force Survey using the Own-Child method, with additional information from the General Household Survey and vital registration data. Comparisons are made between the level of fertility of UK-born and immigrant mothers from minority groups, and the fertility of the populations in the country of origin. Total fertility in all groups has fallen from levels that were initially relatively high. That of some UK ethnic groups has already fallen to about the level of the UK national average (e.g., black Caribbean) or below it (e.g., Indian and Chinese). Only among Pakistani and Bangladeshi women does total fertility remain substantially above the national average despite a continuous decrease over the last 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinction between senescent and non-senescent mortality proves to be very valuable for describing and analysing age patterns of death rates. Unfortunately, standard methods for estimating these mortality components are lacking. The first part of this paper discusses alternative methods for estimating background and senescent mortality among adults and proposes a simple approach based on death rates by causes of death. The second part examines trends in senescent life expectancy (i.e., the life expectancy implied by senescent mortality) and compares them with trends in conventional longevity indicators between 1960 and 2000 in a group of 17 developed countries with low mortality. Senescent life expectancy for females rises at an average rate of 1.54 years per decade between 1960 and 2000 in these countries. The shape of the distribution of senescent deaths by age remains relatively invariant while the entire distribution shifts over time to higher ages as longevity rises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether a couple remain married or divorce has repeatedly been shown to be of importance for the marital stability of their children. This paper addresses the related question of whether the intergenerational transmission of divorce is contingent on the age at which parents divorced and the sex of the spouse who experienced the parents' divorce. Using a population-wide data-set on Norwegian first marriages followed from 1980 to 2003, we find that the intergenerational transmission hypothesis holds also for Norway, that this relationship is stronger for women than for men, and that there is a negative age gradient in the transmission effect for women. The experience of multiple family transitions, such as a parent's remarriage or a second divorce, does not affect couples' divorce risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a provincial-level analysis of the way in which various socio-economic and socio-demographic determinants influence the decision to discriminate against daughters in China. While most existing studies use the infant or child sex ratio as the only variable to be explained, this study analyses separately the two main discriminatory practices: sex-selective abortion (with sex ratio at birth as a proxy) and neglect of girls' health care (with excess infant mortality among females as a proxy). The analysis helps to illuminate the circumstances that encourage sex-selective behaviours, which appear to be dictated mainly by extreme poverty, family support to the elderly, and father's education, together with the social pressure on couples to adhere to traditional values and roles and the constraints on family size. While sex-selective abortion appears to result from long-term strategies to optimize family composition, lethal neglect is the immediate result of economic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the performance of three methods applicable to national-level demographic data of estimating births averted as a consequence of contraceptive practice. Two are based on the relationship between the general fertility rate (GFR) or total fertility (TFR) and contraceptive prevalence, while the third uses Bongaarts' proximate determinants (PD) model. Estimates of the number of births averted and the percentage by which the number would have increased in the absence of contraception are consistent between the GFR-based and TFR-based methods, but in general lower than the estimates generated by the PD-based method, except for a few high-contraceptive-prevalence countries. For 156 countries and areas around the world the estimated number of births that would have occurred in a recent year in the absence of contraception—the average of the estimates of the three methods—is approximately 230 million, which is more than the estimated 129 million births that actually occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an analysis of micro-data for India that shows a high correlation in infant mortality among siblings. In 13 of 15 states, we identify a causal effect of infant death on the risk of infant death of the subsequent sibling (a scarring effect), after controlling for mother-level heterogeneity. The scarring effects are large, the only other covariate with a similarly large effect being mother's (secondary or higher) education. The two states in which evidence of scarring is weak are Punjab, the richest, and Kerala, the socially most progressive. The size of the scarring effect depends upon the sex of the previous child in three states, in a direction consistent with son-preference. Evidence of scarring implies that policies targeted at reducing infant mortality will have social multiplier effects by helping avoid the death of subsequent siblings. Comparison of other covariate effects across the states offers some interesting new insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas most research on the intergenerational transmission of fertility behaviour has focused on transmission of the number of children, this paper studies the transmission of the timing of first births. Specific attention is paid to changes in the strength of transmission across cohorts. Theoretically, it is unclear whether the strength of intergenerational transmission of entry into parenthood can be expected to increase or to decrease across cohorts. Event history analyses of data in Dutch registers show a substantial degree of intergenerational transmission in the age at which people have their first child. The degree of transmission from mothers to children increases for successive cohorts. Intergenerational transmission becomes weaker the longer children postpone entry into parenthood. At young ages transmission from mothers to children is stronger than from fathers to children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 2003, Western Europe experienced a deadly heat wave. It is estimated that 15,000 people died in France from its direct effects. Applying an indirect estimation technique to the monthly number of deaths by sex, age, and place of residence for the period 1996-2003, we estimate the number of years that would have remained to those who died from the heat wave had they been spared. The paper also evaluates the role of the 'harvesting' effect of the 2003 heat wave in explaining the deficit of deaths recorded in 2004 - estimated at 23,000 out of an expected total of 535,000 deaths. The harvesting effect was modest and accounted for fewer than 5,000 of the 'missing' deaths in 2004. The mortality decline in 2004 is thus due mainly to other factors. One hypothesis is that special efforts have been directed towards isolated older people as a consequence of the heat wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European countries differ considerably in their marriage patterns. The study presented in this paper describes these differences for the 1990s and attempts to explain them from a macro-level perspective. We find that different indicators of marriage (i.e., marriage rate, age at marriage, divorce rate, and prevalence of unmarried cohabitation) cannot be seen as indicators of an underlying concept such as the 'strength of marriage'. Multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses are estimated with countries as units and panel regression models are estimated in which annual time series for multiple countries are pooled. Using these models, we find that popular explanations of trends in the indicators - explanations that focus on gender roles, secularization, unemployment, and educational expansion - are also important for understanding differences among countries. We also find evidence for the role of historical continuity and societal disintegration in understanding cross-national differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how permanent income and other components of socio-economic status (SES) are related to fertility in less developed countries. Because permanent income cannot be measured directly, we employ a latent-variable method. We compare our results with those of the more common proxy-variable method and investigate the consequences of not accounting for measurement error. Using data from Ghana and Peru, we find that permanent income has a large, negative influence on fertility and that research must take the latent nature of permanent income into account to uncover its influence. Controlling for measurement error in the proxies for permanent income can also lead to substantial changes in the estimated effects of control variables. Finally, we examine which of the common proxies for permanent income most closely capture the concept. The results have implications beyond this specific dependent variable, providing evidence on the sensitivity of microanalyses to the treatment of long-term economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on population history are often based on incomplete records of life histories. For instance, in studies using data obtained from family reconstitution, the date of death is right censored (by migration) and the censoring time is never observed. Several methods for the correction of mortality estimates are proposed in the literature, most of which first estimate the number of individuals at risk and then use standard techniques to estimate mortality. Other methods are based on statistical models. In this paper all methods are reviewed, and their merits are compared by applying them to simulated and to seventeenth-century data from the English parish of Reigate. An ad hoc method proposed by Ruggles performs reasonably well. Methods based on statistical models, provided they are sufficiently realistic, give comparable accuracy and allow the estimation of several other quantities of interest, such as the distribution of migration times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the past transition from low to high fertility which, in Indonesia as elsewhere, preceded the return to lower birth rates. Data from two parts of the island of Sulawesi where fertility rose during the colonial period are used to explain both why it rose, and why it was originally low. Economic conditions, it is argued, were the most important factors, affecting fertility via the supply of income and the demand for labour. Two schematic models of the 'first fertility transition' are proposed. In areas with low population densities and area-extensive forms of agriculture responsive to commercial stimuli, birth rates rose as the growth of commerce raised levels of prosperity, facilitated marriage, and undermined institutions such as debt-slavery which had previously acted to restrict marital fertility. In densely populated areas with labour-intensive agriculture and heavy state taxation in labour, fertility rose in response to demands for women's (and possibly child) labour that did not necessarily lead to gains in income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an empirical and analytic foundation for regarding period life expectancy as a lagged indicator of the experience of real cohorts in populations experiencing steady improvement in mortality. We find that current period life expectancy in the industrialized world applies to cohorts born some 40-50 years ago. Lags track an average age at which future years of life are being gained, in a sense that we make precise. Our findings augment Ryder's classic results on period-cohort translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented in this paper is an examination of the long-term impact of genocide during the period of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–79) in Cambodia. The very high and selective mortality of the period had a major impact on the population structure of Cambodia. Fertility and marriage rates were both very low under the Khmer Rouge, but recovered immediately after the regime's collapse. Because of the shortage of eligible men, the age and education differences between partners tended to decline. The period also had a lasting impact on the educational attainment of the population. The school system collapsed during the period and therefore individuals—especially men—who were of school age at the time have a lower educational attainment than those from the preceding and subsequent birth cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study presented in this paper is to disentangle the roles of three mechanisms—selection, adaptation, and disruption—in influencing migrant fertility in Ghana. Using data from the 1998 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we fit Poisson and sequential logit regression models to discern the effects of the above mechanisms on cumulative fertility and annual probabilities of birth. Characteristics of migrants from four types of migration stream are examined and compared with those of non-migrants at origin and destination. We find substantial support for the selection hypothesis among both rural–urban and urban–rural migrants. Disruption is evident only in the fertility timing of second and higher-order births in Ghana. Our finding that migrants bear children at about the same rates as the natives at destination implies that the growth rate of cities will slow down quickly and that the rural population will continue to have high fertility. Thus to achieve a reduction in the national fertility level, family planning activities need to be directed towards rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes core innovations in the strategy of research on demographic behaviour. One aim is a shift of attention away from events and towards a focus on dynamic processes and their interplay: away from a preoccupation with marriage and divorce, births, deaths, migrations, and household structure towards a broader perspective that takes account of partnership and intimacy, parenthood, potential and well-being, position in society and space, and personal ties. Another aim is a much closer engagement with genetics, neuroscience, psychology, and behavioural economics. A third aim is a strategy that pays more attention to pathways within the individual, to the processes entailed when the individual interacts with various contexts, and to progressions that involve the interplay of the pathways and processes through the life course. These shifts of emphasis, which have already begun to occur, require a systematic reassessment of priorities for research on demographic behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The model proposed in this paper combines a logistic regression model and a Weibull regression model for the analysis of current-status data. This joint model allows a simultaneous estimation of two sets of effects on the covariates: one on the probability that the event occurs (also known as quantum) and the other on the timing of the event. Thus, the model can be seen either as an extension of a survival-analysis model for use with current-status data where a survival fraction is added in order explicitly to take into account the possibility that the event may never occur, or as an extension of survival analysis with long-term survivors to the analysis of current-status data. As an illustrative application we apply our model to a study of nuptiality in seventeenth-century Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are remittances determined by altruism or enlightened self-interest, and do they trigger additional migration? In this paper these two questions are examined empirically in relation to data from Egypt, Turkey, and Morocco for households with family members living abroad. It is shown, firstly, that one cannot argue exclusively either for altruism or self-interest as motives, since for each country the data tell a different story and both motives can be identified as driving forces behind remittance behaviour. The general conclusion of this study is that the family ties and the net earnings potential of migrants have stronger effects on the flow of remittances than the net earnings potential of the households in the country of origin. Secondly, because the receipt of remittances has a positive effect on the emigration intentions of household members still living in the country of origin, the receipt of remittances may contribute to new flows of migration, particularly in the case of Morocco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arabs in Israel are a heterogeneous but largely underprivileged minority with a history of disadvantage in several domains, including education and employment. In this paper, we document changes in their attainment of various educational levels across cohorts born from the mid-1920s to the 1970s. We make comparisons among different Arab religious groups, between men and women, and between Arabs and the majority Jewish populations in Israel. We find that over consecutive birth cohorts, substantial ethnic differences in educational attainment have narrowed at the lower levels of schooling, but have increased at higher levels. Moreover, the results indicate that the disadvantage of Muslim Arabs in terms of entry into and completion of high school can be accounted for only partially by differences in the social status of their parents and characteristics of their neighbourhoods. The findings suggest that long-term historical differences among groups and discriminatory practices towards Arabs are important factors in explanations of disparities in educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically discusses recent attempts to estimate long-term trends in the stillbirth rate for England and Wales. It assesses the available historical evidence for the level of late-fetal mortality, drawing especially on examples from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. A theoretical fetal–infant life table for a high-mortality population is also outlined as a means of analysing the relationship between segments of the conception-to-first-birthday mortality curve. Finally, new estimates of the stillbirth rate for England and Wales are proposed, based on variations in the early neonatal and maternal mortality rates during the 1930s. These estimates are substantially lower than the earlier estimates and are more in keeping with the available evidence from northern Europe. The implications of the revised estimates for interpretations of historical changes in mortality patterns are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of labour-market attachment on first births of foreign-born women in Sweden. The study uses a longitudinal, register-based dataset consisting of the entire population of immigrants from ten nations and a 5-per-cent random sample of natives. The effects of earned income are evident, with increased income levels increasing the probability of becoming a mother for all observed nationalities. The effects of various forms of participation and non-participation in the labour force do not vary greatly between immigrants and the Swedish-born. Among all subgroups, we find a higher propensity to begin childbearing among those who are established in the labour market. Contrary to popular belief, receiving welfare benefits clearly reduces first-birth intensity for immigrants but not for natives. The similarity in patterns across widely different national groups supports the notion that various institutional factors affecting all subgroups are crucial in influencing childbearing behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the measurement of infant mortality in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). There are worrying indications that official infant mortality counts, based on administrative data, may understate the true gravity of the problem in 15 countries in the region, including 11 out of 12 CIS countries, and 4 countries in South Eastern Europe. In the case of eight CIS countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia plus Romania, the evidence is strongest, not least because surveys that allow independent estimation of infant mortality have been carried out there. In the case of the remaining six countries, the evidence is more circumstantial, and based on inconsistencies within the official data themselves, combined with information on how live births are defined. However, we find also that surveys are rather blunt instruments, and that the confidence intervals that surround estimates from these surveys are often large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively little is known about how environmental and pathological threats to human survival and longevity are perceived by the public. In this study in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, which used individual interviews and focus-group discussions to investigate the changing costs of and motivations for reproduction, respondents were questioned about their perceptions of changes in mortality. The findings show that, while child mortality levels are perceived to have fallen dramatically in recent times, the health and survival prospects of the middle aged and the elderly are seen to have been better in the past. The perceived decline in adult health is attributed to environmental deterioration and lifestyle changes accompanying modernization. This paper explores people's reasons for this unexpected worldview. References to pesticides and chemical fertilizers as causes of death abound in their explanations and are seen to be associated with unhealthy agricultural practices and impiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the impact of childbearing history on later-life mortality for ever-married men and women using historical micro-level data of high quality for southern Sweden. The analysis uses a Cox proportional hazards model, estimating the effects on old-age mortality of number of births and timing of first and last births. By studying the effects of previous childbearing on mortality by sex and social status, we also gain important insights into the mechanisms relating childbearing to mortality in old age. The results show that number of children ever born had a statistically significant negative impact on longevity after age 50 for females but not for males. Analysis by social group shows that only landless women experienced higher mortality from having more children, which seems to indicate that the main explanations are to be found in social or economic conditions specific to females, rather than in the strictly biological or physiological effects of childbearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explanations of historical trends in both mortality and human height differ over the relative contributions of better nutrition and reduced exposure to disease. This paper explores theoretical models in which interactions between diet and disease determine both mortality and height. One model assumes that adult height is directly related to frailty, the relative risk of dying. The second model links frailty to differences between attained and potential height. Diet plays a small role in the transition to low mortality in the first model. The second model assigns a large role to diet in historical mortality trends, but implies that mortality will be unrelated to height in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a quantitative study of the genocide in the prefecture of Kibuye in western Rwanda in 1994. It uses a database produced from a house-to-house survey of victims by the organization of genocide survivors, Ibuka. For a total of 59,050 victims of the genocide, data were collected on age, sex, occupation, commune of residence before the genocide, and place and date of death. An analysis conducted for one commune (Mabanza), showed that the chance of surviving the genocide was higher in those sectors of the commune where the Tutsi population did not congregate at a football stadium in Kibuye. Those who went to a mountainous area and defended themselves were almost the only Tutsi still alive in the prefecture after the month of April 1994. Other determinants of survival included age, sex, and occupation. The number of deaths each day while the killing lasted is estimated for the whole of the prefecture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we conduct descriptive aggregate analyses to revisit the relationship of low and lowest-low period fertility to cohort fertility and key fertility-related behaviour such as leaving the parental home, marriage, and women's labour force participation. Our analyses show that the cross-country correlations in Europe between total fertility and the total first marriage rate, the proportion of extramarital births, and the labour force participation of women reversed during the period from 1975 to 1999. By the end of the 1990s there was also no longer evidence that divorce levels were negatively associated with fertility levels. We argue that lowest-low fertility has been particularly associated with a 'falling behind' of cohort fertility at higher birth orders and later ages. From these analyses we conclude that the emergence of lowest-low fertility during the 1990s was accompanied by a disruption or even a reversal of many well-known relationships that have been used to explain cross-country differences in fertility patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from censuses and surveys to re-estimate mortality levels and trends in China from the 1960's to 2000. We use the General Growth Balance method to evaluate the completeness of death reporting above the youngest ages in three censuses of the People's Republic of China from 1982 to 2000, concluding that reporting quality is quite high, and revisit the completeness of death recording in the 1973-75 Cancer Epidemiology Survey. Estimates of child mortality from a variety of direct and indirect sources are reviewed, and best estimates arrived at. Our estimates show a spectacular improvement in life expectancy in China: from about 60 years in the period 1964-82 to nearly 70 years in the period 1990-2000, with a further improvement to over 71 years by 2000. We discuss why survival rates continue improving in China despite reduced government involvement in and increasing privatization of health services, with little insurance coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines causality and parameter instability in the long-run relationship between fertility and women's employment This is done by a cross-national comparison of macro-level time-series data from 1960 to 2000 for France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the USA. By applying vector error correction models (a combination of Granger-causality tests with recent econometric time-series techniques) we find causality in both directions. This finding is consistent with simultaneous movements of both variables brought about by common exogenous factors such as social norms, social institutions, financial incentives, and the availability and acceptability of contraception. We find a negative and significant correlation until about the mid-1970's and an insignificant or weaker negative correlation afterwards. This result is consistent with a recent hypothesis in the demographic literature according to which changes in the institutional context, such as changes in childcare availability and attitudes towards working mothers, might have reduced the incompatibility between child-rearing and the employment of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have argued that deliberate birth spacing may have played a role before and during the modern fertility transition. There are good historical and theoretical reasons for this view, but it has proved to be hard to demonstrate convincingly that birth intervals were in fact partly determined by attempts at deliberate fertility control. This paper suggests a method of securing evidence on the issue for married couples. The method is applied to three cohorts living in a Belgian town in the nineteenth century. The findings indicate that, even before the fertility transition, couples in the working class were controlling their fertility by deliberate spacing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the author, in a paper published in a previous issue of the journal Population Studies, he questioned the validity of the so-called Far Eastern pattern of mortality as a unique regional mortality model. In her response researcher Noreen Goldman makes three major points. First, the Far Eastern mortality pattern as originally formulated by her differs from that defined by the United Nations Population Division. Second, the method used in author's analysis is different from that of her and not effective in discerning mortality patterns. Third, the Far Eastern mortality pattern as defined by her is indeed a unique mortality model. In this article the author comments on these assertions and further demonstrates that the Far Eastern mortality pattern is not unique regional model. Goldman provides some useful information in her rejoinder, but her major conclusions are unconvincing. While her early investigation into mortality changes in East Asia played a notable role in alerting demographers to the deficiencies of life tables for describing mortality experiences outside of the industrialized world, the claim that the Far Eastern mortality pattern is a distinctive regional mortality model is not well founded.

Though adoption in China is known to have increased as more girls were abandoned and became available for adoption following the introduction of the country's one-child policy in the 1980's, little is known about Chinese adoption practices. This paper investigates the factors affecting adoption in China in the period 1950-87 using data from the National Two-Per-Thousand Sample Survey on Fertility and Contraception of 1988. The results show that the national adoption rate was 2.3 per cent Childless women were more likely than women with children to adopt and did not show a sex preference. Women with children by birth used adoption to secure a child of the 'missing' sex. Women who had experienced the death of a child were more likely to adopt than those who had not. Women with children may have used adoption as a strategy to circumvent the strict family planning policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of papers reporting the use of ethnographies in three population journals and an examination of two case studies show that the criticisms made by anthropologists and others of demographers' use of ethnographies are well founded. In their use of these accounts, demographers tend to present an excessively static view of social organization, to use ethnographic evidence selectively to support other findings, to be indifferent to how long ago an ethnography was produced, to take for granted the validity of the ethnographic evidence, to ignore the broader historical context in which the ethnography was produced, and to be unaware of the ways in which demographic evidence can be used at all stages of the research process. The adoption of anthropologists' suggestions for establishing the plausibility and credibility of ethnographic evidence could improve the value of the contribution made by these studies to demographic research and theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reply to a paper published in the previous issue of Population Studies. Author Zhongwei Zhao questions the uniqueness of a mortality pattern. Zhao assesses the degree of conformity to Far Eastern age pattern of mortality by computing and subsequently graphing, ratios of age specific probabilities of dying in an observed population to the corresponding probabilities in a standard. Given his interest in evaluating the Far Eastern patterns defined by the United Nations, he employs two standards: a Coale and Demeny West model life table and United Nations Far Eastern model life table. Based on the resulting graphs, Zhao concludes that mortality ratios for select Western countries are similar to those calculated for the Far Eastern ones, that is, they all display higher mortality at the older, relative to the younger, ages when compared with the Coale-Demeny model life table. There are two problems with this interface. First, as Zhao discusses, some of the schedules are characterized by life expectancies at birth that differ from the standard, thereby weakening the suitability of the ratio as a measure of an age patter. Second, there is in fact substantial variation across the patterns revealed by the schedules.

Policy makers often worry that economic crises aggravate schooling inequalities, but the longitudinal data to monitor these inequalities are typically lacking. This paper uses the schooling histories of 2,249 pupils to investigate how the economic downturn in Cameroon in the period 1987-95 affected the schooling inequalities associated with sex of pupil, residence, the family's socio-economic status, and family size. We first assess overall patterns and find these inequalities to depend on grade and other vulnerability factors. For instance, girls are disadvantaged in comparison with boys only in rural families and within primary and junior secondary school. We then examine historical changes in schooling inequalities, distinguishing between long-term trends and net changes during crisis years. We find that the inequalities associated with sex of pupil and family size have increased. Results underscore the importance of economic conditions in sustaining progress in closing gaps in education between the sexes. They also suggest that fertility and family size are of growing significance for schooling in African settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study of the influence of children's marriage form and other characteristics on whether married couples in three villages in rural China establish a family separate from the joint family of their natal kin. The results reveal that, for children with a brother, sons in virilocal marriages are more likely than daughters in uxorilocal marriages to establish a family separate from that of their parents and do so earlier than these daughters. However, among children without a brother, sons and daughters do not differ significantly in whether or when they divide off from their extended family and set up a new family. The majority of family division occurs in the first 5 years after marriage for sons and daughters. Number of siblings and other characteristics also affect the likelihood of family division. We discuss demographic, socio-economic, and cultural causes underlying this phenomenon as well as its social implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to two ongoing debates among demographers. One deals with the immediate and deferred health effects of childbearing in the past, and the other with competing explanations--the frailty and insult accumulation hypotheses--for differences in individual health later in life. The study population consists of working women who lived at four locales in England and Wales in parts of the period 1778-1929 and who were under observation for incapacitating sickness during and after their childbearing years. Mothers within the study population are contrasted with a comparison group made up principally of non-mothers. The mothers began their reproductive careers with an advantage in health that was especially evident in the duration of sickness episodes. Even though individual births were less hazardous than individual sicknesses at the same ages, the cumulative effect of childbearing appears to have eroded the mothers' advantage. By ages 50-74 the mothers resembled the comparison group in health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been demonstrated for many pre-industrial populations that the age at marriage, or marriage duration, influences age-specific marital fertility but the reason for this remains unclear. Among the several mechanisms that may be responsible, the following are often cited: secondary sterility or increased sub fecundity associated with parity; declining coital frequency; the age difference between the spouses; and, importantly, parity-dependent fertility control. If the latter mechanism were partly responsible for the marriage-duration effect in pre-transition populations, it would contradict the concept of the modern fertility transition as the evolution (or revolution) from parity-independent to parity-dependent fertility. The study presented in this paper investigates the relative importance of these alternative explanations. The application of multivariate Poisson regression to the fertility data from two birth cohorts in the Belgian city of Leuven shows that a linearly declining or even concave age-specific fertility pattern, disaggregated by age at marriage, does not imply parity-dependent fertility limitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a summary mortality index, the cross-sectional average length of life (CAL). By combining the mortality experience of various cohorts in a cross-sectional fashion, CAL complements traditional one-period or one-cohort indexes and enriches our understanding of population processes. First, CAL provides an alternative insight into the analysis of mortality. By taking into account the real mortality conditions to which individuals in a population have been subject, it tends to yield less favourable mortality levels than e0 and produces different rankings of mortality levels across countries. Second, CAL is a relevant index for the study of population dynamics. In particular, change in CAL over time shows the direct impact of mortality change on population growth, and the e0/CAL ratio for a given year shows the mortality-induced growth that can be expected given current mortality levels. It illustrates that mortality can play a non-negligible role in future population growth, even in the absence of future mortality improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether children later reported as having been unwanted or mistimed at conception will, when compared with children reported as wanted, show adverse effects when the following criteria are applied: receipt of antenatal care before the sixth month of gestation, supervised delivery, full vaccination of the child, and child growth (stunting). The study uses data from five recent Demographic and Health Survey enquiries in Bolivia, Egypt, Kenya, Peru, and the Philippines. In Peru, children unwanted at conception were found to have significantly worse outcomes than other children, but in the other countries, a systematic effect was found only for receipt of antenatal care. Weak measurement of the complex concept of wantedness may have contributed to these results. Birth order of the child, with which wantedness is inextricably linked, has more powerful and pervasive effects, with first-born and second-born children being much less likely to show adverse effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least three kinds of hypothesis may be invoked to interpret religious differentials in mortality. They are (i) hypotheses that refer to characteristics, (ii) those that refer to lifestyle, and (iii) those that refer to the social isolation of minorities. This paper tests all three kinds of hypothesis using data on urban child mortality from The Hague just before and during the demographic transition. A hazard analysis suggests that economic and demographic characteristics do not account for much of the variation by religion. An analysis of seasonal mortality suggests that some of the variation may be explained by differences in lifestyle. The third kind of hypothesis is presented here for the first time. We suggest that the social isolation of small religious groups lowered their exposure to certain kinds of infectious disease. We use a simulation study to show that this hypothesis could account for part of the variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the inconsistency that has appeared in studies of the effect of women's work on fertility in less developed countries has been attributed to the varying accessibility of employment in the modern sector. The analysis presented in this paper shows that continuity of work matters more than sector of work. It also confirms that, even in a setting of low contraceptive prevalence, increased fecundity associated with the less intense breastfeeding practices of working women do not result in shorter birth intervals. The influence of women's work on fertility control is likely to be underestimated if the effects of sporadic versus continuous work are conflated, or if fecundity differentials by work status are unmeasured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to identify common features in the fertility patterns of the English-speaking world and provide a model basis for comparison of fertility between countries and over time. Attention is focused on the heterogeneity within the fertility patterns of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, similar to that reported earlier for the UK and the Irish Republic. The recent age-specific fertility patterns of these countries display a marked 'bulge' in fertility of women under age 25. A mixture model with two-component: Hadwiger functions provides a suitable fit. The heterogeneity thus suggested is shown to be related to differences in the timing of births by marital status, and its magnitude is related to the proportion of births outside marriage. Additionally, there is some evidence that, in the United States, and to a lesser extent in New Zealand, this heterogeneity in fertility patterns may be explained by ethnic differences in the timing and number of births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected by the Agincourt Health and Population Programme in a rural sub-district of South Africa's Northern Province, this paper describes the residential arrangements of a population in rural South Africa, and analyses the impact of these arrangements on children's educational attainment. Children with co-resident parents generally have higher levels of schooling than those who have one or no co-resident parents. However, having a father who is away from home as a migrant appears to benefit older children whereas, for girls aged 11 to 15, having a mother who is a migrant lowers educational attainment. Children who live in households headed by Mozambican refugees have lower levels of schooling than those who live in non-refugee households. Living in a household headed by a woman is not associated with lower levels of education and, for some age-sex groups, appears to be an advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines influences on post-neonatal mortality in Derbyshire (England) in the early twentieth century, by applying multivariate hazard analysis to a rare individual-level data set. The data allow detailed patterns of breastfeeding and weaning to be examined. The role of feeding is given special attention as a mediator between mortality and the other environmental, social, and demographic factors considered. Twins and illegitimate children were more likely to have been hand-fed, but this could explain only a small fraction of their increased vulnerability. Artificial feeding was associated with increased risks of death from diarrhoea, respiratory disease, and wasting diseases, lit is suggested that the link with wasting diseases was predominantly the result of the greater likelihood of congenitally weak children being hand-fed. Most of the variation in post-neonatal mortality, particularly from respiratory disease, was explained by environmental influences -- population density, altitude, and the presence of mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1996 the government of India announced a new national population policy that eliminated numerical targets for new contraceptive acceptors. This paper examines the history of target setting in India and factors that led to the elimination of targets. The analysis is based on published and unpublished reports on India's population policy and the family planning programme and interviews with senior Indian and foreign officials and population specialists. Five factors are identified as playing a role in the evolution from target setting to a target-free policy: (1) the research of India's academics; (2) the work of women's health advocates; (3) the support of officials in the state bureaucracy who approved the target-free approach; (4) the influence of the donors to India's family planning programme, especially the World Bank; and (5) the International Conference on Population and Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the consequences of using different economic status proxies on the estimated impact of economic status and other determinants of fertility. Using micro survey data from Ghana and Peru, we find that the proxies for income that best predict fertility are a principal components score of the ownership of consumer durable goods and a simple sum of ownership of these durable goods, Furthermore, the choice of the proxy generally has a minor influence on the predicted effects of the control variables. We compare the results from using a restricted set of proxies, such as those available in the Demographic and Health Surveys, with the results obtained using a lengthier set of proxies. Our results suggest implications beyond fertility analyses by providing researchers with an awareness of the sensitivity of microanalyses to the treatment of economic status. Our results also suggest practical recommendations for the collection of survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconstructs the trend in the population sex ratio in India between 1971 and 1996 from available information on changes in sex differentials in mortality in the country since the beginning of the century. It is estimated that, although the mortality of females relative to that of males in India has improved since 1968, the population sex ratio increased between 1971 and 1981, stayed constant between 1981 and 1991, and started to decrease only after 1991. This implies that the recorded decrease and increase in the periods 1971-81 and 1981-91 respectively were both spurious and were the results of undercounts of females in 1971 and 1991. Another implication of this finding is that, owing to the lagged effect of past mortality on current trends in the population sex ratio, this ratio is a bad proxy for use in the study of changes in differential mortality by sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of human fertility that occurred in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century, and elsewhere in the twentieth, remains a topic of debate largely because there is no accepted explanation for the event. This paper uses district-level data from Bavaria to study the correlates of the decline of fertility in that German kingdom in the nineteenth century, Bavaria's fertility transition was later and less dramatic than in other parts of Germany. Our results for Bavaria indicate that the European Fertility Project was right about the role of religion and secularization, but missed an important role for the economic and structural effects stressed by economic historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]