Search

This paper presents a study of changes in marriage patterns among the Jewish population of Israel over nearly 40 years. Using data from four Israeli Censuses spanning experience from the late 1950s to the mid 1990s, we employ Schoen's harmonic mean model in a multivariate framework to consider, simultaneously, changes over time in age-specific marriage rates by ethnicity and educational attainment. Our analyses point to a number of clear and interesting findings: (1) an increasingly positive association between marriage and educational attainment, especially for women; (2) the continuing central role of ethnicity in mate selection, despite important declines in ethnic endogamy over the period; (3) a decrease in-the prominence of unions of 'exchange'; (4) some evidence of increasing 'block' endogamy among Jews of Asian and African origin; and (5) a small increase in educational homogamy over the period. Interpretations and implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that expectations -- the process of evaluating the chances for future attainment of valued goals in the home community (stay decision) vs. alternative locations (move decision) -- along with family norms about migration are major predictors of intention to move, which in turn is a proximate determinant of migration behaviour. Utilizing longitudinal data from the 1992 and 1994 waves of the Thailand National Migration Survey, logistic regression models show that a strikingly different set of expectations, household demographic indicators, and migrant capital factors were significant determinants of migration intentions for men and women; reflecting Thai gender roles. Migration intentions, in turn, predicted more permanent, but not temporary, survival strategy migration behaviour, while low household income predicted temporary but not more permanent migration behaviour. The measure of perceived family migration norms was a powerful determinant of migration behaviour, but the size of migrant networks was not a statistically significant determinant of either migration intentions or behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the importance of early-life conditions relative to the prevailing conditions for mortality by cause of death in later life using historical data for four rural parishes in southern Sweden for which both demographic and economic data are very good. Longitudinal demographic data for individuals are combined with household socio-economic data and community data on food costs and the disease load using a Cox regression framework. We find strong support for the hypothesis that the disease load experienced during the first year of life has a strong impact on mortality in later life, in particular on the outcome of airborne infectious diseases. Hypotheses about the effects of the disease load on mothers during pregnancy and access to nutrition during first years of life are not supported. Contemporary short-term economic stress on the elderly was generally of limited importance although mortality varied by socio-economic group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The differences in internal mobility between national populations are large and complex in origin. In studying them we must use comparable indicators. This paper discusses how measures of migration intensity at the national level should be constructed, drawing on analyses of residential mobility in Australia and Britain. We argue for the tailoring of intensity measures to observation plan and to age-time plan, and for removing the effects of mortality and external migration on census-based measures. We propose simple estimation of infant migrants, a standard stopping-age in calculating gross measures of migration, and argue for the use of a common population for computing age-standardized measures of migration and a common mortality schedule for computing migration expectancies. We conclude with recommendations for developing comparable cross-national measures of migration intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an assessment of the nature and magnitude of Tanzania's recent fertility decline, using robust methods for the identification of fertility trends. A decline in Tanzanian fertility began some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The pattern of decline exhibits similarities to patterns identified some years ago in Zimbabwe and Kenya. The decline has been especially marked in urban areas. It has been accompanied by a rapid rise in contraceptive prevalence from the very low levels before 1990 to just under 20 per cent of currently married women of reproductive age. Although falling marital fertility associated with a rise in contraceptive use is the main contributor to the decline in fertility, a rise in the average age at marriage has also made a (smaller) contribution, as has the AIDS epidemic. The fact that fertility is declining in Tanzania raises questions about the social and economic requirements for fertility transitions to begin in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed lag models are used to explore the issue of the importance of economic factors for demographic performance over the course of the demographic and economic modernization of Spain. Mortality indicators are generated by age, sex, and cause and are assessed in terms of shifts in Gross Domestic Product. During the pre-transitional period, links between mortality and economic performance were simultaneous and rather weak but in the expected direction, declining to near 0 by the beginning of the twentieth century. Afterwards the importance of economic shifts for mortality fluctuations increased dramatically and delayed effects began to predominate, only disappearing after 1950. The paper explains the increase in the importance of economic factors and the change in the lag structure in terms of the greater economic volatility of the 1915-1950 period, the progressive implantation of more efficient public health systems and their sensitivity to economic fluctuations, and improving levels of nutrition and general health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops multivariate models to describe homogamy or, more generally, marriage preferences, for corresponding characteristics of brides and grooms. The purpose of these models is to obtain interpretable measures of the degree of homogamy (or marriage preference) on one dimension and to adjust these measures for homogamy on other dimensions. The models are applied to a sample of marriages in Montevideo, Uruguay, with pairs of corresponding variables for the brides and grooms. The analysis estimates the unadjusted and adjusted levels of homogamy on previous marital status, age, education, religion, and location. Homogamy on location, or propinquity, is the single most important variable. Previous marital status and age describe the readiness or eligibility to marry and are associated in their effect on homogamy. Education and religion describe vertical and horizontal differentiation of marriage partners, respectively. The multivariate analysis verifies that these dimensions are largely independent of each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent patterns of fertility in Europe show marked differences between countries. Recent United Kingdom and Irish fertility curves show 'distortions' in terms of a 'bulge' in early age fertility, distinct from the smoother curves of other European countries. These patterns may not be adequately described by mathematical functions used by previous studies to model fertility curves. A mixture model with two component distributions may be more appropriate. The suitability of the simple and mixture Hadwiger functions is examined in relation to the fertility curves of a number of European countries. While the simple Hadwiger model fits recent period age-specific fertility distributions for some countries, others which display a 'bulge' in early age fertility require a mixture Hadwiger model. Some of the parameters of the Hadwiger models appear to be related to familiar demographic indices. The simple and mixture Hadwiger models appear useful in describing and comparing fertility patterns across European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates whether past declines in mortality could have created a huge deficit of eligible men in the marriage market, and whether the ensuing competition for mates could be responsible for the coercive character the dowry system of marriage has assumed in India. New indices have been developed to measure the trends in bridegroom availability that aid in the inquiry into the demographic origins of marriage squeeze. It is contended that the marriage squeeze against women was particularly intense in India because mortality decline, in addition to age structural changes, drastically reduced the number of widowers in the population who once accounted for about one-fifth of the annual supply of bridegrooms. Our projections indicate that, as a result of recent declines in fertility, the marriage squeeze against females will ease substantially by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and that marriages of men will begin to be delayed more than those of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of previous cohabitation on marital stability among the 1958 British birth cohort. Prospective data from the National Child Development Study are used to investigate the way in which family background factors and early lifecourse experiences, including cohabitation, affect the risk of first marriage dissolution by age 33. Discrete time logistic regression hazards models are used to analyse the risk of separation in the first eight years of marriage. Many socio-economic and family background factors are found to act through more intermediate determinants, such as age at marriage and the timing of childbearing, to affect the risk of separation. Previous cohabitation with another partner and premarital cohabitation are both associated with higher rates of marital breakdown. The effect of premarital cohabitation is attenuated but remains significant once the characteristics of cohabitors are controlled, and cannot be explained by the longer time spent in a partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it has been often suggested, most notably by Caldwell, that high fertility in developing countries is motivated by the positive economic returns that children contribute to their parents, empirical evidence to support the hypothesis is limited. This paper describes a method of measuring the economic returns from the average child over the entire parental life-cycle. The method is then applied to detailed household economic data from Côte d'Ivoire. The results indicate that parents give more to their children than they receive and that the economic returns from children are negative. Overall, we estimate that the average child provides an annual rate of return of roughly -- 8 per cent, Our results shed light on how the returns from childbearing vary according to the age of the parents at time of birth. The results also offer a potential economic explanation of why older couples are often first to adopt modern contraception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Korea, total fertility declined from 6.0 in 1960 to 1.6 in 1990, in spite of a strong preference for male offspring. This paper addresses the notion that son preference hinders fertility decline, and examines the effects of patriarchal relations and modernization on fertility using the 1991 Korea National Fertility and Family Health Survey. It was found that women who have a son are less likely to have another child, and that women with a son who do progress to have another child, take longer to conceive the subsequent child. This pattern prevailed for women of parity one, two, and three, and became more pronounced with higher parity. A multivariate analysis showed that preference for male offspring, patriarchy, and modernization are all strong predictors of second, third, and fourth conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although sociologists, demographers, and economists are generally agreed that economic independence enhances the likelihood that men will marry, there is disagreement concerning its effect on women. The view that economic independence weakens women's incentive to marry has probably been the most influential, although it has been subjected to few rigorous empirical tests with individual-level data. In the present paper we examine the predictors of forming a first cohabiting union, of progressing from this union to marriage, and of marrying without previously cohabiting by applying hazard regression to event-history data from the 1992 Swedish Family Survey, supplemented by earnings data extracted from the national taxation register. We test a battery of measures that reflect people's past, current, and potential attachment to the labour market. We find that the correlates of union formation for women are largely indistinguishable from the correlates of union formation for men, and that far from being less likely than other women to cohabit or to marry, women with a greater degree of economic self-sufficiency are more likely to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses retrospective life history data to assess the impact of family planning services on contraceptive use in a rural Mexican township. Between 1960 and 1990 contraceptive use rose and fertility declined dramatically. Both contraceptive supply and demand factors were influential in these trends. The start of the government-sponsored family planning programme in the late 1970s was associated with a sharp rise in female sterilization and use of the IUD. However, once we controlled for the changing socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the sample, the presence of family planning services had no significant effect on the likelihood that women used modern reversible methods compared to traditional methods. Men and women expressed concerns about the safety of modern methods such as the pill and the IUD. Efforts to increase modern contraceptive use should place greater emphasis on communicating the safety of these methods and improving the quality of services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a survey from four rural counties, this paper examines the progression to a second birth and the sex ratio at second birth. Women whose first-born is a boy are less likely to have a second child and the sex ratio at second birth is normal, while women whose first-born is a girl are much more likely to have a second child and the sex ratio at second birth is very high. Furthermore, women's educational attainment and county of residence affect the sex ratio at second birth. The author speculates that the high sex ratio at second birth is more likely to be achieved through sex-selective abortion for women with higher educational attainment, and for women with lower educational attainment by such other means as under-reporting of female births and giving up female babies for adoption. County of residence has the greatest impact on the percentage of women who have a second birth and the sex ratio at second birth. This effect relates to the way the family planning policy is enforced in each county. The paper suggests that local family planning offices benefit financially by receiving fines and fees from couples who violate the family planning policy, and use the money to enforce the policy among those who cannot afford the fines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a promising start some three decades ago, the application of micro-economic analysis to fertility studies has proved disappointing. It has not led to an increased understanding of fertility decisions nor to the policy insights which had been expected. This paper considers the reasons for this disappointment. It reviews briefly the development of the now dominant version of the economic approach to fertility analysis, the so-called "Chicago Model". It concludes that several basic conceptual and theoretical weaknesses of this approach have led it up a blind alley. The paper concludes with suggestions for new assumptions and approaches which may make the theory more relevant for policy programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed account of fertility levels and trends in England and Wales since 1938, with a briefer coverage of a much longer time-span. The paper is concerned both with the measurement of fertility and with understanding the observed fertility behaviour. We lament and correct the failure of demographers to apply measurement tools available since the 1950s to the analysis of fertility in England and Wales, with a particular emphasis on adjustment of period measures and period parity progression ratios and show how some of the grosser errors of analysis and interpretation might have been avoided by earlier use of these approaches. We also relate these estimates to more recent ones. Once a clearer account of trends has been established, the paper goes on to reinterpret and explain the baby boom and baby bust. The conclusion looks at future prospects for fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical demography as a separate discipline came into existence when family reconstruction was first developed for the analysis of a pre-transition population. This paper assesses the significant achievements made in this field of population studies since then. Attention is also paid to equally significant findings obtained from aggregative analysis based on back projection, and to a large body of research results for the period of the demographic transition. In the last part of the paper, new research directions are discussed. Data issues as well as methodological ones are raised. Special attention is given to newly emerging Asian historical demography where different source materials require different methods and techniques, which in turn are expected to broaden the scope of the so far disproportionality fertility-oriented field. Finally, discussions are extended to economic, cultural and institutional aspects of the subject, with a plea not to isolate demographic analysis from other branches of historical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the development of indirect techniques for estimating vital rates in the developing world from census and survey data. The methods considered include the following: the exploitation of age distributions using the 'own children' method to estimate age-specific fertility rates by characteristics of the mother; the P/F ratio method for estimating current fertility and its extensions; the calculation of parity progression ratios to detect changes in family-building patterns following the adoption of contraception early in the transition process; methods for estimating childhood and adult mortality, including maternal mortality, from data on the survival of close relatives; the derivation of life tables from such estimates; and the correction of death rates using 'growth balance methods'. The paper concludes with a section on possible future improvements in estimation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we re-estimate the effects of breastfeeding patterns on the timing of resumption of menses after controlling for maternal nutrition and maternal stressor variables. The analysis shows that simple hazard models, used on data from a longitudinal study in Guatemala, provide estimates of effects on timing of resumption of menstruation that are (a) comparable to others discussed in the recent literature and (b) generally consistent with hypotheses relating patterns of lactation, maternal nutritional status, and maternal stressors to processes that accelerate (decelerate) resumption of anovulatory cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current sociological research acknowledges the growing complexity of fatherhood and the widening divide observed between men's conjugal and parental careers. Little is known, however, of the importance of these changes in the population at large. What proportion of men, for example, continue to experience fatherhood within a single, durable relationship? How many have to reassess their role at its collapse? To what extent do men have to juggle different paternal roles simultaneously or live through a series of episodes as a father, and how is this diversity of experience evolving from one generation to another? In this paper we attempt to answer some of these questions, using multiple-decrement life table techniques to analyse retrospective data concerning the conjugal and parental histories of Canadian men. Our analysis reveals the extent and speed of the paternal life course transformation, and suggests that this will continue at least in the mid-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of parental preferences for grandchildren on young adults' entry into cohabitation and marriage. We also consider the influence of young adults' own fertility preferences on their cohabitation and marriage behaviour. We develop a theoretical framework explaining why these childbearing attitudes influence young people's cohabitation and marriage behaviour. The results show that the childbearing preferences of young women and their mothers affect their choice between cohabitation and marriage, so that wanting many children increases the likelihood of choosing marriage. Young men whose mothers want them to have many children enter any type of co-residential union, either marriage or cohabitation, at a much higher rate than men whose mothers want them to have fewer children. Our results also provide insights into the childbearing behaviour of cohabitating couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates of mortality in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79) range from 20,000 deaths according to former Khmer Rouge sources, to over three million victims according to Vietnamese government sources. This paper uses an unusual data source -- the 1992 electorate lists registered by the United Nations -- to estimate the population size after the Khmer Rouge regime and the extent of "excess" mortality in the 1970s. These data also provide the first breakdown of population by single year of age, which allows analysis of the age structure of "excess" mortality and inference of the relative importance of violence as a cause of death in that period. The estimates derived here are more comparable with the higher estimates made in the past. In addition, the analysis of likely causes of death that could have generated the age pattern of "excess" mortality clearly shows a larger contribution of direct or violent mortality than has been previously recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on fieldwork done in 1992-93 in the Senegal River valley, a Sahelian region characterised by heavy out-migration for more than thirty years. As a result of this long history of human displacement, migration has now become a local institution of its own. More recently, the introduction of irrigation in an otherwise drought-prone area seems to have reduced the intensity of the phenomenon, but the momentum gathered by the local institution of migration means that the decrease of migration rates is likely to be very slow. The present analysis borrows some of its basic concepts from the new institutional economics and should therefore be seen as an illustration of how this perspective, quite effective in describing the complexity of social exchanges in rural societies, helps explain various determinants of migration. We will show, for example, that the two types of migration observed (short-term and long-term) respond similarly to common structural and family conditions, and appear to differ mainly when individual variables are taken into account. This feature underlines the crucial opposition between, on the one hand, individual determinants and, on the other, structural factors determined by economic or family characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With more than 22 million inhabitants, Uzbekistan is the most populous of the Central Asian republics of the former USSR. Using data from a retrospective survey conducted in 1992 among women of reproductive age, the paper examines fertility trends and determinants during the twentieth century. The analysis shows that the absence of a government-supported birth control programme and the strong pro-natalist policies of the Soviet authorities during most of the century did not affect either the onset, nor the progress of the fertility transition. The results indicate, however, that the social development programmes undertaken by the Soviet government did play a very active part in the transition as shown by the impact of education on reproductive behaviour, as well as on the very specific contraceptive mix adopted by the population after the mid- 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how value change and economic and social change have jointly affected fertility in Japan since 1950, and especially since 1973 when fertility resumed declining after some 15 years at near-replacement level. The resumption of fertility decline since 1973 has been driven primarily by underlying economic and social changes. Value change has tended to lag behind fertility change, and this lag has tended to be larger in Japan than in other advanced nations, primarily because underlying economic and social conditions have evolved more rapidly in Japan, and because it takes time for values to adjust to changes in underlying conditions. Because of Japans high degree of cultural homogeneity, values tend to be widely and quickly shared, so that under certain conditions value change tends to occur in spurts. In Japan, many of the more important value changes affecting fertility in recent decades are bound up with major educational and job gains by women, which have led to greater economic independence and more emphasis on values of individualism and equality between the sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of family planning programmes and declining fertility in improving infant and child survival has been the subject of considerable debate. In this paper, we analyse data from Matlab, Bangladesh, to assess the net effect of falling total fertility on the mortality rates of young children. Areal time-series models are estimated to determine the role of fertility decline after having controlled for the effects of other health service interventions. The results show that fertility reductions have little effect on neonatal and posteneonatal mortality, possibly a small effect on toddler (second-year) mortality, and a significant and relatively large impact on the mortality of children aged between two and four years. Possible explanations for these findings and their implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have conducted surveys specifically designed to study the autonomy/power of women in two Nepali settings. Setting I is in the hills, 75 kilometers southwest of Kathmandu; Setting II is in the tarai (plains) a few kilometers from the border with India. Previously the authors have shown that women in the hill setting have much more autonomy/power than women in the tarai setting. In this paper we focus on aspects of marriage formation and post-marital kin contact and their possible effects on women" s autonomy/power. Specifically, we measure women's autonomy/power with indicators of women's freedom of movement and power in making household decisions. We assess whether these indicators are influenced by aspects of mate selection and kinship, including patrilocal post-marital residence, arranged marriages, emphasis on the virginity of brides, village exogamy, dowry, and contact with natal kin. We show that marriage regimes differ substantially in the two settings. While marriages in both settings are usually arranged, some love marriages are reported in Setting I. Furthermore, the mean age at ceremonial marriage in the tarai (Setting II) is about 11.5 years compared with 14.5 in the hills (Setting I). In some cases, we find that individual-level indicators of mate selection or kinship are associated with individual-level measures of women's autonomy. But these associations cannot account for the dramatically different degrees of autonomy in these settings. Such findings do not imply that kin relations and marriage formation are irrelevant for women's autonomy/power. But they do challenge the version of these arguments that isolates marriage/kinship effects at the individual level. Autonomy, while measurable at the individual level, is determined primarily by broad-based institutional arrangements and associated community social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, the author argues that both structures and levels of childhood mortality patterns have important implications for family economies in historical and in developing societies. Where mortality is high or when its neonatal component is low relatively to the probabilities of death at higher ages, economies tend to suffer because parental investments in bearing and rearing the children who die are greater. These investments can best be measured in terms of time, especially mothers' time. In unfavourable mortality regimes, a far greater part of a woman's activity is dedicated to children who eventually die, thus limiting the time and energy available for other productive activities. In this way, adverse infant mortality patterns can be seen as an independent variable, an important contributing factor to the vicious circle of poverty and underdevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographers, as early as Malthus, have assumed that the preventive checks, delayed marriage and celibacy, were absent in traditional China. In this paper on the Qing (1644-1911) imperial lineage, we demonstrate that, instead, there may have been a different, more `modern' preventive check: fertility control within marriage. Marital fertility of lineage couples during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was low to moderate. Such low fertility was the product of three behavioural mechanisms: late starting, early stopping and, most significantly, long spacing. Couples apparently regulated their fertility according to their economic resources and the sex of their surviving children. Moreover, they did so, we suggest, by regulating their coital frequency. Deliberate fertility control, in other words, was already within the - calculus of conscious choice' for some Chinese well before this century. The speed of contemporary sinitic fertility transitions may accordingly be attributed to the fact that they did not require a change in attitudes, only the diffusion of new incentives and effective technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper data from the 1911 Census of the Fertility of Marriage of England and Wales are used to study patterns of mortality decline by socio-economic characteristics, principally the occupation of husband. That census reported data on number of wives, children ever born, and children dead by marriage-duration cohorts for 190 non- overlapping occupations of husband. These results, along with those on number of rooms in the dwelling of the family are used to make indirect estimates of childhood mortality using the techniques described in United Nations, Manual X. These procedures produce values of q(a), the probability of dying before reaching some exact age a Estimates for q(2), q(3), q(5), q(lO), q(15), and q(20) are derived from data on women married 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15-19, 20-24, and 25-29 years, respectively. These estimates can also be dated to a point in the past. These values can also be converted to a corresponding level of a Model West life table, which describes the `average' mortality regime which the children of those women experienced. This furnishes a basis to look at mortality decline for various social classes and occupational groups. Ordinary least squares regressions of the levels of Model West life tables implied by the 1(a) values on time give one measure of mortality decline. Another is the absolute amount of the increase in the level of the Model West life tables from marriage-duration cohort 20-24 years to 0-4 years. The aggregate results indicate that social class in England and Wales during the 1 890s and 1900s tended to be related to the speed of mortality decline: childhood mortality declined more rapidly in the higher and more privileged social class groups. But the results were neither nearly as strong nor as regular as those which predicted the level of mortality within any marriage-duration cohort. These outcomes are not particularly sensitive to the three different social-class stratification schemes used: the 1911 English Registrar General's classification; the 1951 English Registrar General's classification; and the 1950 U.S. Census classification. There was also a fairly regular and predictable gradient for the number of rooms in the home: child mortality was higher in families who lived in larger dwellings. Analysis of 190 detailed male occupational groups revealed that considerably more of the variation in mortality levels than of trends could be explained by social-class categories. Between 20 and 40 per cent of variation in mortality trend could be accounted for by social class alone, as opposed to 50 to 80 per cent of mortality levels for different marriage-duration cohorts. Results for a more restricted sample of 116 occupations for which income estimates could be made revealed a similar pattern. In addition, income was virtually unrelated to the pattern of mortality decline, and improvement was more rapid in groups who were more urban. This reflects the role of rapidly improving urban sanitation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England. In contrast, income was significantly related to childhood morality levels for various marriage-duration cohorts (with higher income associated with lower mortality), while urbanization was inversely correlated with mortality levels (more urban groups experienced higher mortality). Overall, social class (or occupation group), income, and urbanization were more successful in explaining mortality levels than time trends across occupations, although social class and the extent of urbanization did reasonably well in accounting for trends. Over a longer period, the transition in child mortality was under way by the 1 890s, but its pace and timing varied in different occupations and social class groupings. Although absolute differences in infant mortality were reduced after about 1911, relative inequality persisted even as infant and child survival improved for all groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews and interprets recent demographic trends and prospects in the two Irelands, North and South. We discuss both the influence of religion on demographic behaviour, and the impact of demographic trends on the distribution by religion. In the Republic of Ireland, we show that the long-standing gap in marital fertility between Catholics and others had virtually disappeared by the 1980s. In Northern Ireland the gap is still there in the 1990s, though considerably reduced. However, estimates of its size hinge on how the significant proportion of non-respondents to the census question on religion are allocated. We identify some peculiarities of the non-respondent population which imply that it was more `Catholic' in 1991 than first reports suggested. The Catholic share of Northern Ireland's population may accordingly be larger -42 to 43 per cent - than previously thought. In both communities, the future of the Catholic share depends less on fertility than on migration patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of the fertility desires of marital partners on subsequent fertility. In particular, we attempt to identify the role played by disagreement between the spouses in predicting the couple's fertility outcome. The results indicate that when husband and wife disagree about whether or not they want another child, the fertility desires of both partners are equally important in determining whether the couple actually have an additional birth. The dominance of men in sub-Saharan African societies tends to operate in the present study only in the initial stages of a couple's reproductive lives (associated with four or fewer children). This tendency is offset by the stronger influence of the wife's desire in the later stages. Thus, we conclude that fertility research in sub-Saharan Africa should solicit information from men and women, and any programme or policy that aims to promote fertility decline in the region must involve both sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographic changes affect population growth not only during the same period, but also in later years. A method for measuring those later effects is developed in this paper, by adopting a cohort perspective of population growth and decomposing the current growth rate into contributions of past demographic changes. Its application to 210 years of Swedish demographic history indicates that events several decades ago could exert substantial impacts on current population growth. The decomposition results reflect some typical patterns of demographic and epidemiological transitions as well as such historically unique events as the baby boom of the mid- 1940s and the emigration boom to the United States. In addition, the results provide a quantitative explanation for the puzzling combination of the positive actual and negative intrinsic growth rates in recent Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis that minority status creates social tensions that affect fertility behaviour attracted much attention during the late 1960s and l970s, but then disappeared after 1980. This sudden exit was due to a combination of methodological difficulties in distilling the independent effects of minority status from other socio-economic factors, weaknesses or ambiguities in the empirical record, and other difficulties. This paper examines a natural experiment that serendipitously by-passes more of these problems than has been heretofore possible - the attempt by Chinese in Malaysia to time births into the auspicious Year of the Dragon. A multivariate model shows that this unique fertility behaviour was more common in Malaysian districts with smaller proportions of Chinese, which suggests that minority status can directly affect ethnic identity. The results also highlight a paradoxical solution to a grander problem facing socio-demographic theory. Before we can posit that culture or values play an independent role in transitions to lower fertility, we should first trace a baseline definition of these values from the study of demographically trivial events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the development of the population of the Gourma in Northern Mali from the beginning of this century to the present. As part of Northern Sahel, the area has been hard-hit by at least four droughts this century and is among the least developed in Mali. The data used include the available population censuses, colonial records and recent survey research. The droughts of 1973 and 1984 may have increased child mortality, but the most important effects may have been short-term reductions in fertility, as well as increased migration. While approximately 30 per cent of adult men are absent, the overall picture of migration is much more complex than simply one of emigration, as migration into the Gourma and internal redistribution of population also play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Age-at-marriage estimates from family reconstitutions may be biased downward when they are based only on marriages of people who continue to live in their parish of birth, because when the probability of migrating rises with age, younger people are selected in preference to older ones. Micro-simulations show that the bias can have dramatic effects. In this paper French-Canadian data are used to investigate the importance of the bias and to verify empirically the micro-simulation results. Although a high proportion of people moved between birth and marriage, the bias had virtually no effect, given the specific characteristics of the migrations. If one cannot avoid discussing the timing of migration before marriage, when measuring age at first marriage using only data on "stayers" it is just possible that in most settings, it is the same for those who lived in their parish of birth, and those who had moved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demographers, as early as Malthus, have assumed that in traditional China the positive check, mortality, was largely beyond human control. This paper re-examines the role of the positive check in late imperial China through an analysis of an historical source of unprecedented demographic detail and accuracy: the genealogy of the Qing (1644-1911) imperial lineage. Basing ourselves on our calculations on the infant, child, and young adult mortality of 33,000 lineage members born in Beijing between 1700 and 1840, we conclude that during the late eighteenth century, many lineage couples regularly used infanticide to control the number and sex of their infants. At the same time, they also took advantage of innovations in paediatric care to protect the children they decided to keep. Although these results derive from an elite population, they, nevertheless, call into question our understanding of the operation of the positive check in late imperial China's demographic system, suggesting a much larger potential role for individual agency than was previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents detailed evidence on fertility levels and trends in China from a survey conducted in 1992 by the State Family Planning Commission. The evidence is analyzed internally and by comparison with evidence from the Census of Population of 1990 and from two previous surveys. The results of the 1992 survey, which indicated fertility levels far below replacement during the early 1990s, have been greeted with considerable scepticism. Close attention has therefore been paid to evidence and argument bearing on the completeness of reporting of births in the survey. While the survey data probably understate fertility levels after 1990, the results for 1990 and before appear to be generally reliable. Even allowing for substantial underreporting of births during 1991-92, it appears likely that Chinese fertility did, in fact, fall to replacement level during the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that Australia's flourishing immigration-historiography is well served by studies related to immigration and settlement patterns in colonial Australia. The proportion of emigrants assisted by Australia's colonial governments between 1831 and 1860 was 56 per cent; during the peak years between 1848 and 1859. Intricate and intriguing patterns of mobility have emerged which imply complex motivational stimuli. Not least of the new perspectives which have recently emerged to emphasize such complexities, is research into the mobility and settlement of specific groups of women including female convicts, convicts' wives, distressed needlewomen, emigrant gentlewomen, and English and Irish orphans. For the roughly half who were private travellers, unassisted by officialdom, the picture remains somewhat misty. But for those who were selected for government assistance to emigrate, historians possess a range of sources which, until now, have remained largely untapped. In this paper one aim is to explore the socio-demographic origins of government-assisted emigrants from the Great Britain to Australia before 1860 and to demonstrate the extent to which sources originating in Australia can open a window on the lives and accomplishments of Great Britain labouring classes.

The majority of studies relating to mortality conditions in nineteenth-century Africa deal with the small number of white settlers or visitors. This paper examines the level and causes of mortality in Liberia of Africans who emigrated from the United States. We describe crude and age-standardized death rates by cause of death, and examine the age pattern of mortality and its conformity to existing models of age patterns for causes of death. The results of this analysis indicate that the age pattern of mortality of the Liberian immigrant population recapitulates rather precisely existing models of age patterns for all causes of death, and from specific causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses recent arguments that sustained fertility decline cannot occur in circumstances of inequality, insecurity, and injustice. Naturally, these conditions are to be abhorred. However, the empirical record suggests that none of them acts as an absolute barrier to mass adoption of birth control and subsequent fertility decline. Recent trends in Bangladesh illustrate this point most vividly. One of the greatest fallacies of many fertility theories has been the assumption that there is an economic or social imperative in underdeveloped countries for couples to have many children. To the contrary, the historic norm for all societies has been an average of only about two surviving children per woman, implying an adaptation to low, not high, net fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easterlin's supply-demand framework for the determinants of fertility is widely accepted because it has brought conceptual clarity to the study of factors that underlie the childbearing process. This model has not, however, succeeded in quantifying the fertility determinants in a convenient and generally accepted manner. The variant of Easterlin's model presented in this paper aims to remove obstacles to empirical implementation. In addition to quantifying the supply and demand factors, a new variable, the degree of preference implementation, is introduced to measure the role of costs and benefits of fertility regulation. Applications of this alternative method, to data from surveys in 18 less developed countries indicate that recent declines in fertility have largely been due to reductions in the demand for births, and to increases in preference implementation. Changes in the supply of births appear to have played only a minor role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many theories of fertility predict that mass education reduces fertility, but this effect may be produced in a variety of ways. In this paper, microdemographic data from a rural community in Nepal, in which the spread of mass education and fertility limitation is just beginning, are used to examine these links. The analyses contrast the influence of parents' and children's educational experiences on parents' fertility preferences and behaviour. The results indicate that children's schooling has a strong influence on both fertility preferences and behaviour. The effects of parental schooling are weaker, and also inconsistent in different models. These findings provide support for theories that link mass education to the onset of fertility limitation through children's schooling experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the health experience of British soldiers and their families in India between 1870 and 1920 in the light of the major controversies about the beginnings of the health transition. It finds that while death rates began to decline as the result of the introduction of better environmental sanitation during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, health education and personal hygiene had a much more dramatic effect during the first decade of the twentieth. It concludes by showing that, despite all the care and attention bestowed on their health, death rates of British and Indian soldiers around 1910 were a good deal higher than those of ordinary Indians of the same age and sex during the 1970s and 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constrained by estimated population totals and observed totals of births and deaths, estimates of age-structures from inverse projection have been widely used in historical demography. Back Projection attempted, by using hypothetical constraints on net- migration, to estimate the population totals as well, and has been used to derive `censuses' for England from 1541 to 1871. A wider formulation, called Generalised Inverse Projection, is proposed in this paper, which replaces back-projection and establishes its relation to Inverse Projection more clearly. Under the same assumptions as back projection, but using the new method, the estimates for England are virtually unchanged. This new method is capable of performing population projections, subject to a wide variety of hypothetical and empirical constraints, for contemporary as well as historical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 30 years in Ghana, the proportion of households headed by women has increased and the composition of these households has shifted, with a growing percentage of households headed by the divorced and widowed. The paper assesses the implications of these trends for family welfare, and evaluates more broadly the current role of women in the economic maintenance of households with children, using data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey. The consumption levels of household members are highest in households in which women play a primary role in the provision of cash earnings either in partnership with their husbands, or as the primary cash providers. In all types of household, women work, on average, longer hours than men, but the differences between the sexes are greatest when men and women co-reside, and least when they do not. Access to resources from an economically committed male is found to be important to the welfare of female-headed households, which made up roughly 30 per cent of all households in Ghana in 1987/88. Because the majority of households in Ghana are maintained by the economic contribution of more than one member, headship often presents a misleading picture of the overall division of economic responsibilities within households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I comment on the unexpected finding from primary and secondary data that, although the age at effective marriage is significantly lower in North India compared to the southern part of the country, mother's age at first birth is very similar in both regions. That is, the first birth interval is much longer in the North. Standard socio-economic and biological reasons for this difference are found to provide incomplete and unsatisfactory explanations - instead, the longer first birth interval in North India is explained in terms of the marriage and kinship patterns in this area which lead to (i) lower frequency of intercourse and (ii) long periods of abstinence when the wife visits her parental home. Both these factors operate primarily during the first years of marriage and result in a convergence of the ages at first birth in the two regions. The argument, therefore, questions the correctness of policy prescriptions which equate early marriage with an early start of childbearing, and seek to control the latter by changing the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of famine, that acted as an important deterrent to population growth in Japan during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, because famines tipped the already precarious balance between mortality and fertility in favor of mortality. The author analyses the mortality experience of a temple population - the population of Ogen-ji, during the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the characteristics of mortality change during Japan's last great famine - the Tempo famine of the 1830s. The term high-mortality regime best captures the demographic circumstances of the Ogen-ji population during the first half of the nineteenth century. Child mortality was especially high, with birth rates slightly higher than death rates, and the population grew very slowly. The immediate effect of the famine was to reduce the size of the population by ten per cent. Analysis of the Ogen-ji death data leaves no doubt that the mortality crisis of 1837 was a subsistence crisis. In addition to the disease names that were normally listed as causes of death, two new disease terms - `jieki' and ekibyo' - appeared at the height of the famine. These diseases that were considered epidemic and were characterized by acute diarrhea, represented the physiological breakdown of the human body during final stages of starvation. These deaths disappeared when the famine was over. The new governments played a constructive role to alleviate serious famine conditions in northeast Japan in 1868-70. The government implemented various relief policies such as an embargo against feudal lords, the granting of loans, the transfer of government-owned rice, the transport of great quantities of domestic rice. This suggests that the problem of alleviating mortality crises caused by regional and periodic food shortages was resolved fairly quickly by timely intervention of the government.

This article studies a case of immigration into population with below replacement level Germany. During the last quarter-century, fertility rates in many industrial countries have fallen below the level needed to replace their populations in the long run. Large-scale immigration, however, affects not only the economic and social status of the native-born, but also produces and strengthens resistance to the religions, customs, and cultures of their new fellow-citizens and reinforces existing fears of foreign infiltration. It is, therefore, important for scientists and policy-makers to understand the demographic implications of continued low fertility combined with immigration. In this study, the percentage of foreign-born residents in the total population is considered as a political key variable, because natives are expected to become more strongly opposed to immigration when the percentage of foreign-born is already high and increasing. The fear of being outnumbered by foreign-born migrants is likely to reduce the tolerance and acceptance of immigration among the receiving country's population.