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Limited access to credit can cause financial vulnerability for a household and economic loss for a country. Previous studies have shown that only small portions of the population in developing countries had access to formal credit, and few of them focused on Chinese populations. Using data from 2011 China Household Financial Studies, this study explores Chinese households' credit use. We found that over half of the sample (53.21%) used credit, and only 19.77% used formal credit. Use of formal credit was associated with socioeconomic characteristics of household heads (e.g., employment, education) and households (e.g., income, net worth). The findings suggest that promoting financial inclusion in China involves expanding access to formal credit among the socially and economically disadvantaged households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recognition of poverty as a multidimensional concept has led to the development of more adequate tools for its identification. By allowing for subgroup and regional decompositions, those instruments are useful to allocate public action where most needed. This paper applies the Alkire and Foster (2011a) Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) to study single-mother and biparental families in Nicaragua, modifying its original structure to match more closely with the country's current structural problems. Using Nicaragua's last Demographic and Health Survey (DHS 2011/2012), our multidimensional poverty figures contrast with the government's national poverty line estimates, suggesting that income poverty overestimates the number of poor people. Thus, our MPI can help as a complement for traditional consumption poverty and Basic Needs analysis; even extending the exploration by using other official household surveys. On the other hand, multidimensional poverty analysis found poverty dominance of male-headed families over single-mother and female-headed biparental families, which serves to contradict the notion of women being more vulnerable than men. Within the MPI, the most important contributor was the Living Standards dimension, composed by indicators directly related to housing conditions, and the second most deprived dimension was Education. A strong policy implication that arises from our findings is the reduction of the urban-rural poverty gap. Specifically, our findings exalt the need for governmental policies directed to reduce Nicaragua's housing and educational deficits as a priority, particularly in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores changing production relations in agriculture in context of increasingly widespread and longer-duration male outmigration, as against previous, short-duration and seasonal migration. It investigates how de facto women-heads of households (WHHs) are changing a resilient crop-sharing system in absence of adequate access to productive assets, formal training or experience in farming, and while contributing labour to farming and coping with gendered demands on their time. Based on qualitative inquiry in one of the poorest parts of South Asia, the Eastern Gangetic Plains, the paper shows that a section of WHHs are replacing sharecropping arrangements with fixed-value rental arrangements that resemble commercial contracts. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of this emerging development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on strategic interaction within a family and examines individual decision making. We set up a two-stage game model. In the first stage of the game, a man and a woman who have not yet met simultaneously determine their education levels non-cooperatively. In the second stage, they marry and determine their leisure time. In the second stage, we compare two decision modes, non-cooperative and cooperative, in order to characterize the nature of cooperation within the families. In addition, we extend the basic model on the basis of a Stackelberg game. In this setting, we consider the case in which a man acts as a leader and a woman acts as a follower. We show that the leader invests in higher education and chooses more leisure time than the follower. This coincides with the empirical findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between household head's work form (by considering number of hours worked and multiple job holding) and household food insecurity utilizing the Food Security Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Households where the head is employed in multiple jobs, in work with varied hours, or part-time work are more likely to be food insecure than households with a head in a regular full-time job, even when controlling for income and other social demographic characteristics. Models are estimated separately for married couple, cohabiting, male-headed, female-headed and single-person households to show the interaction between work form and household structure. The relationship between food insecurity and nonstandard work arrangements may be due to unstable incomes and complex schedules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests two opposing models of household behavior, the income pooling hypothesis and the bargaining model, by examining the final decision-making and expenditure patterns of married men and women in Malaysia. The data used is from the responses of 1,778 married persons obtained from a survey of employed Malaysians. The results show that women are often the final decision-makers on everyday household expenditures while men make the final decisions on large household expenditures, but both men and women practice autonomy in decisions related to financial investments. In spending, variations are observed between men and women in their level and proportion of expenditure of certain categories of goods and services. Relative earning share is a significant factor in decision making as well as consumption expenditure. These results tend to support the bargaining model of household decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the way consumption changes around retirement in Italy. Using micro data covering the 1985–1996 period, we document the existence of a one-off drop in consumption at retirement of the household head, as in the UK and the US, but (at 5.44%) smaller in size, and show that consumption of work-related goods falls around retirement and home production of food and other goods increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the levels and determinants of intergenerational co-residence among older women and men in Egypt and Tunisia. Women in both settings have higher odds than do men of living in child-headed households, largely because women more often are widowed and have fewer economic resources. In Tunisia, women have higher odds than do men of living in child-headed households partly because of their poorer health. In Egypt, the odds of living in parent- and child-headed intergenerational households for unmarried compared to married older adults are higher for women than men. Disparate needs and marital histories likely contribute to the different living arrangements of older women and men in these settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to assess differences in the level and structure of income mobility in a selected sample of European countries. We adopt recent theoretical proposals for the decomposition of axiomatic and welfare measurements of mobility in exchange, structural and growth components. Decomposition exercises which take into account some type of division of the population and income sources are also performed. We find that cross-country income mobility comparisons largely depend on the type of indices used. The relative positions of the countries considered change when the analysis is based on ethical instead of objective measures of income mobility. Results also show that in most countries income growth has a very limited effect upon aggregate mobility, being the most important determinant the rerankings of individuals, with a little weight for inequality changes. Although some common results exist concerning the delimitation of groups experiencing the greatest income fluctuations, such as individuals belonging to single-parent households or young household heads, the intensity of these results varies greatly across countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether the relative bargaining power of spouses plays a role in explaining household financial risk taking. Traditional models assume that household decisions are made based on pooled resources and common preferences. In contrast, bargaining models hypothesize that household decisions depend on the relative bargaining power of spouses. According to bargaining models, if women are more risk averse, then households should exhibit less financial risk taking as the bargaining power of the wife increases. Results of an analysis of household financial risk taking in a sample of dual-earner, married households from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances are more consistent with decision making based on pooled resources rather than on the relative bargaining power of spouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent household surveys include questions about respondents’ subjective well-being. Nearly all of them, however, pose these questions only to the household head. This paper addresses an issue with practical and methodological concerns. Can survey designers ask only household heads and expect them to accurately represent the living conditions of the entire household? Using South Africa’s 1998 October Household Survey (OHS) to estimate econometric models of subjective well-being, this paper finds that the response of household heads is determined largely by factors shared by the entire household – housing, for example – and not on those experienced primarily by the head – individual health status, for example. This suggests that South African household heads are truly reporting household well-being, rather than their individual level of satisfaction. While this result probably cannot be widely generalized, the testing methodology is replicable and could be applied to similarly structured data sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of parents’ and children’s incomes in the ‘leaving home’ decisions of young adults in Europe. Using the ECHP data on 11 European countries, results from random and fixed-effects models suggest that the leaving home decision is positively related to the child’s income. The effect of parents’ income is less clear and of lower magnitude. These patterns are broadly similar among European countries, in spite of significant differences in the institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity travel patterns of individuals in a household are inter-related, and the realistic modeling of activity-travel behavior requires that these interdependencies be explicitly accommodated. This paper examines household interactions impacting weekday in-home and out-of-home maintenance activity generation in active, nuclear family, households. The in-home maintenance activity generation is modeled by examining the duration invested by the male and female household heads in household chores using a seemingly unrelated regression modeling system. The out-of-home maintenance activity generation is modeled in terms of the decision of the household to undertake shopping, allocation of the task to one or both household heads, and the duration of shopping for the person(s) allocated the responsibility. A joint mixed-logit hazard-duration model structure is developed and applied to the modeling of out-of-home maintenance activity generation. The results indicate that traditional gender roles continue to exist and, in particular, non-working women are more likely to share a large burden of the household maintenance tasks. The model for out-of-home maintenance activity generation indicates that joint activity participation in the case of shopping is motivated by resource (automobiles) constraints. Finally, women who have a higher propensity to shop are also found to be inherently more efficient shoppers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses interviews with 1,156 married dual-earner parents of Children aged 10-17 from the 1992-1994 National Survey of Families and Households to examine relationships between work and community resources and demands and two aspects of family integration activities, with adolescents and family cohesion. The results indicate that mothers' shorter paid work hours and father' lower participation in community-professional organizations and moderate and high levels of informal helping are positively related to activities with adolescents, whereas moderate and high levels of participation in organized youth activities are positively related to family integration. Community-based subjective resources are positively related to family integration, whereas work-based subjective demands are negatively related to family cohesion. The findings generally are similar for mothers and fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first objective of this article is to clarify which model best captures the structure and trend of the influence of social origin on children's education. The second objective is to analyse how general conclusions on historical trends in educational reproduction change if we add mother's status background to the model. Six contrasting hypotheses are derived from the body of literature dealing with models on families' socioeconomic status. All hypotheses are translated into empirical models and their explained variance is compared. A pooled data set is used that contains data from the Netherlands, West Germany, and the USA. The Modified Dominance Model, that distinguishes the influence of the highest from the lowest status parent, has the best model fit. Regarding the second objective we see that adding the mother's influence to that of the father's does not change general conclusions on trends in educational reproduction. Over time the influence of both parents decreases continuously. However, the influence of the mother's education and occupational status on children's educational attainment is substantive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical demography documents that mother-only families were more common among African Americans than among Euro-Americans early in the twentieth century. We find direct evidence that African American males in both first and higher-order marriages were more likely to have (re)married previously married women and were more likely to have (re)married women with children. This racial difference in (re)marital partner choice reduced the racial difference in the prevalence of mother-only families such that, in the absence of such remarriage choices, the prevalence of mother-only families in the turn-of-the-century African American population would have been even higher than has been reported. Remarriage in this period countered the various demographic, economic, cultural, and social-institutional forces that disproportionately destabilized African American marriages; it must be taken into account more fully by analysts concerned with racial differences in family structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the implications of random discount rates of future generations for saving behavior and capital holdings in a steady state competitive equilibrium with heterogeneous population. A well-known difficulty in deterministic economies with heterogeneous households is that in steady state only the most patient households hold capital. In this paper we state conditions under which this random discounting is sufficient for households other than the most patient ones to save. We thus provide a simple and natural way of overcoming the aforementioned difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Studies in Population is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The cognitive-contextual framework of Grych and Fincham (1990) and the emotional-security framework of Davies and Cummings (1994) were used to explore both the direct and indirect pathways between marital conflict and adolescent adjustment. Two hundred and three non-clinic adolescents (114 females and 89 males) from intact families completed self-report questionnaires concerning their adjustment behavior, perceptions of parental conflict, and attachment to parents and peers. Marital conflict was found to have a direct effect upon adolescent adjustment, with adolescents from high-conflict homes displaying greater adjustment difficulties. Indirect effects of conflict were evident through both the adolescents' cognitive appraisals of conflict, and the adolescents' perceptions of the parent-child relationship. Differential gender effects were obtained, highlighting the importance of adolescent gender as a mediating variable. These findings were used to propose that an integrated, cognitive-emotional framework might be necessary to fully understand the conflict/adjustment relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a detailed descriptive analysis of trends in the lifetime incidence and duration of female headship for successive cohorts of women in the U.S. It examines cohorts from 1910 to 1969 in the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID) of the U.S. These cohorts cover a period marked both by a tremendous growth in female family headship and by a major change in the components of headship growth, from divorce in the 1960s and 1970s to unmarried childbearing in the 1980s. The article shows that more than half of the 1965 and 1970 cohorts of women will experience female family headship in some part of their childrearing years, up from one-third of women in the 1935 cohort. Among black women, as many as 80 percent will become family heads at some time during their childrearing years. Although only 45 percent of white women will ever become family heads in some sense this is a majority experience, when considered, that more than 20 percent of women are projected to remain childless. The increasing proportion of women who ever become heads has contributed most to the growth in lifetime headship. Little change in the average years of headship experienced by those who ever become heads, is observed. Most two-parent families will not last long enough for the children to reach 18 in an intact family.

Social environmental influences on survey cooperation are explored using data from six national household surveys in the United States matched to 1990 decennial census data Consistent with the past literature or prosocial behavior, cooperation rates in these six surveys are found to be lower in urban, densely populated, high crime rate areas Measures of social cohesion show no evidence of influencing cooperation. The influence of the environmental variables is then observed after introducing statistical controls for household structure, race, age of household members, presence of children, and socioeconomic attributes of households Over half of the measured influence of the environmental variables is explained by these household-level attributes. These findings have practical import for survey administrators and are informative for the construction of a theory of survey participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is frequently argued that home birth is morally irresponsible because it involves the taking of risks on behalf of the fetus. Against this position, I argue three things. First, the fact that home birth involves risks does not necessarily entail that choosing or attending one is morally unacceptable, irresponsible or wrong. Second, parents have a prima facia prerogative to decide on behalf of their fetuses and children whether risks should be taken. While this prima facia prerogative can be overridden, reasonable and widely accepted criteria for doing so are not met in the case of home birth. Third, since the current attitudes and behaviours of physicians with regard to home birth constitute a de facto morally and socially unjustifiable overriding of an informed parental decision, physician autonomy should be restricted so as to preserve the autonomy of the medical consumer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market structure has been characterized by the locations of brands in the perceptual space of households (perceptual map) and the importance weights associated with the attributes of this map. It is hypothesized that a line extension or a new brand introduced into this market could potentially affect the brand locations or the importance weights. We show how a simple extension of a recent approach to market structure analysis enables us to empirically identify which, if any, of these two aspects of market structure is affected by the line extension or new brand. An empirical application to the detergent product market is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Studies in Population is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper employs new measures of household headship in order to study trends and regional patterns of household composition in Canada and the United States, from 1900-01 to 1970-71. At the national level, household headship remained relatively stable until 1940-50, and then rose sharply thereafter. Provincial and state data provide evidence for substantial regional differences in household formation, with generally lower rates in the East and higher rates in the West for both nations. At the turn of the century, frontier areas of Canada and the United States exhibit extremely high headship rates, as does the American South. Rates generally converge over time, but some regional differentials persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides measures of short and long-run inequalities as well as income stability among households with male heads using the panel study of income dynamics for the period 1969-1981. It is found that short-run inequalities have been increasing over the time period examined. Moreover, some fluctuations around this increasing trend are of a transitory nature and appear to be smooth over time. Long-run measures are less subject to fluctuations and provide a better measure of inequality. They show a decrease in inequality in the early periods but increases after the mid-1970's. Several aggregator functions are used to compute "permanent income" variables for the long-run measures of inequality and stability. The measures are decomposed to reflect differences in age, education, and race. They are decomposed also into groups which are free of such group characteristics. Education has the most important influence on inequality. Stability profiles indicate, furthermore, most of the reduction in inequality in the early periods has been within particular groups. Reductions across groups are minimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the effect of child health on marital stability and family structure in an economic framework. We use the 1988 National Health Interview Survey's Child Health Supplement, with a sample of about 9,000 families, to test whether having an unhealthy child decreases the mother's chance of being married and whether it increases her chance of living in an extended family. Using two different measures of child health, we find that having an unhealthy child decreases the mother's likelihood of being married. Our results imply that children in poor health are more likely to face obstacles beyond their illness because they also are more likely to suffer the consequences of poverty and the poor schooling outcomes that result from being raised in a female-headed household. The only mitigating factor is that unhealthy white children are more likely than their healthy counterparts to be living in an extended family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Married couples without children are more geographically mobile than those with children, at least through age 45. Among husband-wife couples with children, ages of children exercises a consistent mobility differential; when age of family head is controlled for, families with children under 6 years old only are the most mobile both within and between counties, followed by those with children under 6 and 6-17 years old, and followed in turn by families with children 6-17 years old only. The relationship between number of children and the probability of moving within counties has a reverse J-shape for family heads at each age under 45; after age 45 the relationship assumes a more normal J shape. Number of children is inversely related to the probability of migrating (moving between counties) for husband-wife families in which the husband is under 35; after age 35 the relationship is erratic. The effect of ages of children generally holds for each size of family. Female family heads with children are generally more geographically mobile than male family heads (wife present) at the same age and with the same number and ages of children present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two different ways of categorizing people's geographical location are compared as to their relation to earned incomes of family heads, after adjustment for education, age, sex arid race. One, the traditional code, uses the size of the city in which the family lives. The other, originally suggested by Bernard Lazerwitz, focuses on the distance to, and the size of, the central city of the nearest standard metropolitan statistical area. Both appear useful, and their joint effects are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the characteristics of other families which are families headed by a male or female with no spouse present. Judging from the marital status of other family heads, a preliminary to the formation of an other family is the break-up of a marriage. The marital statuses of other family heads suggest at least three different events which precede the formation of other families. One is the death of one spouse. About half of the females heading other families are widowed, and the remaining female heads of families are most likely to be divorced or separated. The definitional difference between other families and normal families focuses on membership composition, that is, a spouse is missing in other families. In terms of family composition, and the responsibilities of family management, there is an equality of sexes in husband-wife families. Other families with younger heads, however, represent deviations from the normal pattern of the family life cycle. Other families with young female heads will continue as an important segment of all other families, particularly as long as economic, social and demographic conditions are favorable for childbearing, legitimate or otherwise, and for divorce and separation.

The article discusses the relationship between income inequality and social capital. It states that an empirical exploration was conducted by Robinson and colleagues which measures social capital in U.S. households headed by single females. It mentions that Bjornskov compiled social capital data where social trust serves as the primary indicator for social capital.