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The article explores the behavior of the society towards criminal convictions and marital norms, including same-sex union, across Australia based on data gathered from the 2011-2016 Census. Topics discussed include cultural clash between the elite and the prisoner underclass, the emergence and persistence of norms on conservative marital practice, and attitudes toward marriage and support for same-sex marriage.

A key debate in studies of native-migrant relations relates to the barriers to integration created by ethno-cultural differences and socio-economic disadvantage. How do changes in socio-economic inequality between ethnic groups affect interethnic ties in a divided society? I investigate this question by analysing the effect of ethnic inequality on the evolution of cross-ethnic marriages in a society fractured by conflict between natives and settlers. I find the effect is contingent on the ethnic group. Certain groups intermarry more in response to reductions in socio-economic disadvantage; others, however, remain indifferent. I suggest the difference relates to cultural distance. Specifically, I point to differences between groups in the power of the norms and sanctions regulating members' social interactions outside of the group. These 'closure' norms interpose an ethno-cultural distance. I establish these findings with field interviews and census data on over six million marriages in Mindanao, an ethnically diverse region in the southern Philippines and location of an insurgency waged by rebels, drawn from the native Muslim Moro population, resentful of the influx of Christian settlers. I find Moro intermarriage unresponsive to socio-economic equalisation and suggest the strength of their ethno-cultural norms, derived from their ethno-religious identification, accounts for their distinctive response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses human rights violations related to child marriage in Africa. Topics explored include the launch of the Campaign to End Child Marriage by the African Union (AU), child marriage statistics in the Sub-Saharan African region based on data from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and the commitment of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights to the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals.

Abstract: In this paper, I study the role of changes in the wage structure and expectations about marriage in explaining the college gender gap reversal. With strongly diminishing marginal utility of wealth and in the presence of a gender wage gap, single women have a greater incentive than single men to invest in education. Marriage‐market distortions tend to depress the overall benefit of education for women relative to men. I develop a tractable two‐period model and parameterize it using US census data for the cohort born in 1950. I then show that it can generate a reversal and that the most important driving force for this is the decline in marriage rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past four decades, the more developed countries have experienced a marked decline in the marriage rates of both men and women. The reasons for the decline remain a debated issue. Three explanations predict that the decline in marriage is a period effect, while two predict that it is a birth cohort effect. To determine whether the decline is a period or a cohort effect, this study performed an age-period-cohort analysis. Using data from Israel, our results show that both cohort replacement and period factors were important. Until 1990-1994 the decline in marriage was a period effect, whereas after 1990-1994 the decline was a cohort effect. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for the three major explanations of the decline in marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the flood on marriages in flooded households compared to marriages in unaffected households by utilizing the 2010 Pakistani flood as a type of natural experiment.Design/methodology/approach A difference-in-difference approach is used to estimate the effect of the flood on marriages in 62 flooded districts compared with those in 53 non-flooded districts by utilizing the six waves of the household level surveys data from the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement, 2004-2005 to 2014-2015.Findings Results show that the flood decreased marriages; by 17 marriages per 1,000 individuals aged 15-50 years in flooded districts during the flood year and the effect disappeared after the flood year. The negative impact of the flood on rural marriages is significantly higher and robust.Social implications The flood seemingly discouraged individuals in flooded districts to be engaged in long term relationship mainly due to the flood related economic and financial losses. In order to acquire and maintain individual overall well-being, sexual health in vital to maintain mental and physical health, so policy makers/humanitarian aid-providers should assist the affected adults financially or by arranging their marriages at least during the flood year. The study also suggests that the delay of marriages means the accumulation of human capital in the form of school attainment of male marriages, so younger adult should be discouraged marrying at early age.Originality/value This study contributes to the literature in the following ways: first, the study empirically investigates the impact of flood – both immediate and long term – on marriage rates by using a natural experiment. Second, it examines the relationship based on geographic location and gender. Third, it investigates the impact of natural hazards on child marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research suggests that an increasing age at first marriage has contributed to the prevalence of sexual hookups on U.S. college campuses. In this article, we use life course and marital horizons theories to analyze the influence of ideal age at first marriage on hooking up among unmarried heterosexual college students. Analyses of the Online College Social Life Survey ( N = 17,981) show a positive association between ideal age at first marriage and hookups for most students, but not for students whose mothers have no post-secondary education, Asian men, Asian women, and Latina women. Variation in ideal marriage timing does not account for gender, racial/ethnic, and class gaps in hookup participation. Results are discussed with reference to the role of sexuality in processes of stratification throughout young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades the opponents of same-sex marriage have mounted a “second front” in the debate, shifting their focus from the so-called clobber texts to the creation narratives of Genesis. These scholars argue that Gen 2:24 presents a normative definition of marriage that precludes same-sex marriage. I argue that Gen 2:24 offers not a normative definition of the institution of marriage but a description of the powerful draw to relationship that is the result of God’s actions in creation. Just as interpreters of Gen 2:24 across centuries and traditions have approached the verse against the background of a wide range of presenting social issues (e.g., divorce, incest, polygamy, bestiality, and, more recently, homosexuality), so the authors of Gen 2:24 were influenced by a pressing social issue, namely, intermarriage. I explore this hypothesis by means of a word study focusing on the verse’s two verbs. The results of the word study are further tested by consideration of the historical and literary contexts of the verse and of the earliest instances of reuse of Gen 2:24 in canonical and noncanonical texts. I conclude that, far from presenting a normative definition of heterosexual marriage, Gen 2:24 is an acknowledgment of the powerful attraction that causes human beings to seek relationship in opposition to the wishes of their parents, society, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown that men's wages rise more rapidly than expected prior to marriage, but interpretations diverge on whether this indicates selection or a causal effect of anticipating marriage. We seek to adjudicate this debate by bringing together literatures on (1) the male marriage wage premium; (2) selection into marriage based on men's economic circumstances; and (3) the transition to adulthood, during which both union formation and unusually rapid improvements in work outcomes often occur. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we evaluate these perspectives. We show that wage declines predate rather than follow divorce, indicating no evidence that staying married benefits men's wages. We find that older grooms experience no unusual wage patterns at marriage, suggesting that the observed marriage premium may simply reflect co-occurrence with the transition to adulthood for younger grooms. We show that men entering shotgun marriages experience similar premarital wage gains as other grooms, casting doubt on the claim that anticipation of marriage drives wage increases. We conclude that the observed wage patterns are most consistent with men marrying when their wages are already rising more rapidly than expected and divorcing when their wages are already falling, with no additional causal effect of marriage on wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of marriage on the long-term outcomes of schizophrenia is largely unknown. This study was to examine the impact of marriage on the 14-year outcomes and identify the correlates of marriage among persons with schizophrenia in rural community. All study participants with schizophrenia (n=510) were identified in 1994 in an epidemiological investigation of 123,572 people aged 15years and older and followed up in 2004 and 2008 in Xinjin County, Chengdu, China. The Patients Follow-up Schedule (PFS) was used in 2004 and 2008. The rate of follow-up in 2008 was 95.9%. Unmarried individuals in 1994 had higher rates of homelessness and suicide, and lower rate of survival in 2004 and 2008 than those married. In 14-year follow-up, unmarried individuals were more likely to be male, to have higher level of psychiatric symptoms and lower rate of full remission of illness, and to report lower level of work functioning, as well as with fewer family members and caregiver, and lower family economic status. The predictors of being married in 2008 included being married in 1994, shorter duration of illness, being female, and lower level of education. Being married is predictive of more favorable 14-year outcomes of persons with schizophrenia in the rural community. Given that marriage can be instrumental for enhancing family-based support and caregiving, as well as improving the community tenure of persons with schizophrenia, it is important to develop programs to enhance opportunity for persons with schizophrenia to get and stay married. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Despite a persistent decline in Korea's marriage rates over the past three decades, there is a striking lack of research on the transition to marriage among young Koreans. Similarly, few studies have examined how economic determinants have evolved over the past several decades, even as the Korean social and socioeconomic structure has undergone substantial transformation. METHODS This paper examines changes over time in the determinants of marriage formation in Korea, using employment history data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS) on three cohorts of young adults born in the 1950s-1970s. RESULTS Results indicate that, for women, the marital implications of being employed reversed over the three decades examined. While working decreased the odds of getting married for women born in the 1950s, it had no statistically significant effect for those born in the 1960s, and it strongly increased the odds of marriage for the most recent (1970s) cohort of women. For their part, men's employment not only continued to positively predict getting married over the three decades, but its impact became stronger with each cohort, so that a man's odds of transition to first marriage was most strongly tied to his employment status for those born in the 1970s, as compared to earlier cohorts. CONTRIBUTION This study contributes to the literature by addressing the relationship between marriage timing and economic resources using more direct measures, examining the association between mandatory military service and marriage formation, and testing if determinants of marriage timing may evolve over time in Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the population of the Krummhörn region (Ostfriesland, Germany) in the 18th and 19th centuries, the death of the father in the family led on average to the accelerated marriage of his children. Three evolutionary explanations are offered for this “paternal absence” effect in the literature: namely, (i) the assumption of an adaptive “psychosocial acceleration” of the children with prepubertal experience of uncertainty; (ii) an opportunistic adjustment of life and reproduction decisions as an adaptive reaction to the personal cost–benefit balances that are changed by the father's death; and (iii) given the genetic parent–offspring conflict, an increase in the reproductive autonomy of offspring after the loss of the dominant father figure. Our models, which are based on the analyses of the vital statistics data derived from church registers and tax rolls and compiled into a family reconstitution study, attribute the greatest explanatory power for the patterns found in the Krummhörn to the opportunistic adjustment approach (ii). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study focuses on the fertility of first-generation female and male Turkish migrants in Germany. To evaluate whether timing effects such as fertility disruption or an interrelation of marriage, migration and childbirth occur, we examine first and second births in the years before and after immigration to Germany. The Turkish sample of the Generations and Gender Survey which was conducted in 2006 offers the unique opportunity to examine Turkish immigrants as a single immigrant category. We question the common understanding that Turkish immigrants who arrived to Germany after 1973 mainly arrived for family reunification resulting in high birth intensities immediately after immigration. To distinguish different circumstances under which male and female immigrants have arrived to Germany, we include the combined marriage and migration history of the couple. We find that first birth probabilities are elevated during the years immediately following migration. But this effect is not universal among migrants with different marriage and migration histories. It appears that the arrival effect of high birth intensities is particularly high among female immigrants and is evident only among marriage migrants, that is Turks who married a partner who already lived in Germany at the time of the wedding. By contrast, among those who immigrated for family reunification, we do not find such an arrival effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The total fertility rate (TFR) of Taiwan has remained below the replacement level 2.1 for past thirty years. Currently, 16 of its 22 counties and cities have TFRs below 1.3, with TFRs in middle and southern Taiwan even below 1. In the recent decade, various pronatalist policies have been adopted in Taiwan to cope with the low fertility issue. However, little is known about the effectiveness of these policies. In order to identify the group(s) of women that should be targeted to increase the TFR effectively, we have constructed a stochastic model to perform an elasticity analysis. The results show that changes in marriage rates among women aged 25–29 years would have the largest impact on the TFR, with an elasticity value of 0.32. This means that every 1 per cent increase in the marriage rate of women aged 25–29 may increase the TFR by about 0.32 per cent (i.e. an increase of about 2.6 children per 1000 women). The TFR is also very sensitive in responding to changes in the marriage rate and parity-1 fertility rate of 30–34-year-old women, with elasticities of 0.19 and 0.16 respectively. The divorce rate has a small but negative impact on the TFR. Also, the possible contribution of third- and higher-order births is insignificant. These findings suggest that policies aimed at increasing the marriage rate among women in their late twenties and early thirties, and supporting first births of women in their early thirties, are likely to raise Taiwan’s fertility rate effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statistical description of the formation of marriages is hampered by the fact that the intensity of marriage of one sex depends on the available supply of potential spouses from the other. Unlike the situation that occurs in the study of fertility, there is no reason to give a preference to either of the sexes. To address the fundamental problem caused by the two-sex nature of the process, a solution is proposed that considers the sexes jointly. The solution relies on a novel use of generalized averages. The model is formulated in stochastic terms, and it is parametrized in terms of the overall level of nuptiality, the relative propensity of nuptiality by age, and the mutual relative attraction of spouses at different ages. Although national statistics collection relies on data aggregated by age groups, the models are formulated at individual levels to show how estimation could also be carried out in small populations. In particular, examples of how maximum likelihood estimation can be carried out are given for specific parametric models. The methods are illustrated by both monthly and annual nuptiality data from Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most recent studies of marriage patterns in China have emphasized the male-biased sex ratio but have largely neglected age structure as a factor in China's male marriage squeeze. In this paper we develop an index we call 'spousal sex ratio' to measure the marriage squeeze, and a method of decomposing the proportion of male surplus into age and sex structure effects within a small spousal age difference interval. We project that China's marriage market will be confronted with a relatively severe male squeeze. For the decomposition of the cohort aged 30, from 2010 to 2020 age structure will be dominant, while from 2020 through 2034 the contribution of age structure will gradually decrease and that of sex structure will increase. From then on, sex structure will be dominant. The index and decomposition, concentrated on a specific female birth cohort, can distinguish spousal competition for single cohorts which may be covered by a summary index for the whole marriage market; these can also be used for consecutive cohorts to reflect the situation of the whole marriage market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with community interpreting services for migrant women in South Korea. The number of migrant women in South Korea has increased dramatically in recent decades. Faced with demographic changes in the wake of the influx of marriage migrants, the South Korean government has implemented policies to support marriage migrants’ early settlement and adjustment to life in South Korea, and the related public services have expanded to support multicultural family life and child education. Interpreting and translation services have played a crucial role in the delivery of such migrant support programmes. The services have been provided by migrant women who have successfully settled in South Korea. The services, which are funded largely by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and partly by local governments, serve the dual purposes of providing employment to migrant women and providing language assistance to migrants and multicultural families. This paper first provides an overview of interpreting and translation services provided by the Multicultural Family Support Centres, then, based on interviews with 23 interpreters and 10 supervisors at the Multicultural Family Support Centres, discusses how it has empowered marriage migrants and what needs to be done to further their career development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article integrates search-based models of marriage and money. We think about households as organizations, the way Coase thinks about firms, as alternatives to markets that become more attractive when transactions costs increase. In the model, individuals consume market- and home-produced goods, and home production is facilitated by marriage. Market frictions, including taxes, search, and bargaining problems, increase the marriage propensity. The inflation tax encourages marriage because being single is cash intensive. Microdata confirm singles use cash more than married people. We use macrodata over many countries to investigate how marriage responds to inflation, taxation, and other variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A striking change in American society in the last 40 years has been the decline and delay in marriage. The fraction of young adults who have never been married increased significantly between 1970 and 2000. Idiosyncratic labor income volatility also rose. We establish a quantitatively important link between these facts. If marriage involves consumption commitments, then a rise in income volatility delays marriage. We quantitatively assess this hypothesis vis-à-vis others in the literature. Increased volatility accounts for about 20% of the observed delay in marriage and is strong relative to other mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the increase number of the median age of marriage in the U.S. It examines the influence of societal miscalculation and to the delay of marriage particularly in considering the patterns of family formation , stability and child well-being. It also stresses the biological processes of maturation among the teenagers.

In this paper, the author analyses the institute of divorce in the modern world. Given the fact that the institute of divorce is inseparable from the institute of marriage, in the introductory part the author points out to the specific characteristics of marriage in the contemporary society and discusses some factors which are presently perceived as the primary causes of instability of marital relations. In the central part of the article, the author provides an overview of divorce legislation in some European countries which are traditionally used as role models in the field of regulating family relations, thereupon focusing on the applicable divorce law in Serbia. In particular, the author looks into the process of liberalization of divorce legislation and examines its impact on the growing divorce rate in the contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some new and unique cross-county data from 19th-century Sweden over birth, death, and marriage rates, grain prices, and harvests. Local grain prices correlate negatively with local harvests, suggesting imperfectly integrated food markets. The so-called positive and preventive checks are also present: good local harvests are associated with high birth and marriage rates, and low death rates. We also find that the fertility and marriage effects from changes in prices -- but not harvests -- are greater in counties that rely more on manufacturing, consistent with an open-economy model of fertility choice, where agents earn income from both agriculture and manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a new model for empirically analyzing dynamic matching in the marriage market and then applies that model to recent changes in the U.S. marriage distribution. Its primary objective is to estimate gains by age from being married today (till death of at least one spouse) relative to remaining single for that same time period. An empirical methodology that relies on the model's equilibrium outcomes identifies the marriage gains using a single cross-section of observed aggregate matches. This behavioral dynamic model rationalizes a new marriage matching function. The model also solves the inverse problem of computing the vector of aggregate marriages, given a new distribution of available single individuals and estimated preferences. Finally, this paper develops a simple test of the model's empirical validity. Using aggregate data of new marriages and available single men and women in the United States over two decades from 1970 to 1990, I investigate the changes in marriage gains over this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage continues to be a major life goal in the United States. The grim news about the state of Black heterosexual marriage can be found in headlines that bemoan the lack of marriageable Black men, and statistical studies that routinely show Black marriages are difficult to maintain. We argue that the stresses on Black marriages are best understood by looking at them through a prism that highlights the intersection of gender and race. We show that the role of Black wife is particularly challenging. When people reason from an unquestioned White model of marriage and relationships, they often suggest that there is something pathological about the marital patterns of Blacks. Yet using the race/gender prism, we construct an argument that these patterns are pioneering and call into question the logic of the White middle-class model of intimate relationships between women and men. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research in the 1980s pointed to the lower marriage rates of blacks as an important factor contributing to race differences in non-marital fertility. Our analyses update and extend this prior work to investigate whether cohabitation has become an important contributor to this variation. We use data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth to identify the relative contribution of population composition (i.e., percent sexually active single and percent cohabiting) versus rates (pregnancy rates, post-conception marriage rates) to race-ethnic variation in non-marital fertility rates ( N = 7,428). We find that the pregnancy rate among single (not cohabiting) women is the biggest contributor to race-ethnic variation in the non-marital fertility rate and that contraceptive use patterns among racial minorities explain the majority of the race-ethnic differences in pregnancy rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine variation in trajectories of women’s marital quality across the life course. The analysis improves upon earlier research in three ways: (1) the analysis uses a sequential cohort design and data from the first 35 years of marriage; (2) I analyze rich data from a national sample; (3) I examine multiple dimensions of marital quality. Latent class growth analyses estimated on data from women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 ( N = 2604) suggest multiple trajectories for each of three dimensions of marital quality, including two trajectories of marital happiness, two trajectories of marital communication, and three trajectories of marital conflict. Socioeconomic and demographic covariates are then used to illustrate how factors such as income, cohabitation, and race-ethnicity set individuals at risk of poor marital quality throughout the life course by differentiating between high and low trajectories of marital quality. Women on low marital quality trajectories are, as expected, at much greater risk of divorce. Taken together, these findings show how fundamental socioeconomic and demographic characteristics contribute to subsequent marital outcomes via their influence on trajectories of marital quality as well as providing a better picture of the complexity in contemporary patterns of marital quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Radovi Zavod za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zaru is the property of Zavod za Povijesne Znanosti HAZU 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.)

An absorbing story is narrated by the child of a mixed marriage, Hindu and Muslim, in the first quarter of the twentieth century. At once creative and critical, the memoir is innovatively structured. In its ex-centricity to established forms and styles it seeks to represent substantially and formally the disjunctivity of memory, the flux of experience and everyday living, and the incertitude of meaning. Through a muddle of anecdotes, conversations and dialogues with the self, the minority subject is produced as always in process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition to adulthood has become an increasingly telescoped process for Americans, with marital formation occurring increasingly later in the life course. It is therefore striking to find a context like the U.S. military, in which marriage rates bear an anachronistic resemblance to those of the 1950s era. Using narrative data from life history interviews with military affiliates, the authors show that the military has reinstitutionalized military families at the same time that civilian families are becoming deinstitutionalized. Structural conditions of modern military service, such as war deployment and frequent geographical relocation, have created policies that rely on families to make these conditions more bearable for military personnel. These policies are part of an overarching institutional culture that directly and indirectly promotes marriage. The authors bring together life course literatures on turning points, the welfare state, and linked lives to show how the military has reinstitutionalized families in these ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinizes the recently postulated link between the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and economic success. Multivariate analysis of 4,705 demographic observations, covering women's marriage age, female lifetime celibacy, and household complexity in 39 European countries, shows that the most extreme manifestations of the EMP were associated with economic stagnation rather than growth. There is no evidence that the EMP improved economic performance by empowering women, increasing human capital investment, adjusting population to economic trends, or sustaining beneficial cultural norms. European economic success was not caused by the EMP and its sources must therefore be sought in other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of African Studies Review is the property of Cambridge University Press 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 essay examines the long-standing Malagasy role of vadimbazaha, a word that literally means "the spouse of a European." Malagasy women have historically aspired to this role to gain status and wealth as intermediaries who link social networks, enabling the flow of wealth, people, and opportunities among families. Prior generations of vadimbazaha stayed in Madagascar. Today, in the context of economic hardship, women seek European men and migrate to France. Their goal is to use their position in France to build a life-sustaining flow of resources back to Madagascar.Women achieve this goal by managing their French husbands' and Malagasy kin's horizons of expectation with respect to race, gender, kinship, and reputation. Understanding vadimbazaha's economic practice requires attending to their ability to manage the meanings associated with their sexual, reproductive, and caring labor as much as the money they earn through low-wage labor and remittances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical Bayes estimation for marriage preferences are worked under two kinds of beliefs regarding the parameters, e.g., where the marriage preferences seem to be equal or not. In both cases priors are in accordance with beliefs. Computational methods for different hyperparameters of the empirical Bayes are developed. It is seen from the data that a male of age i has preferences of marrying a woman in age category j . A general model of preferences is given using empirical Bayes procedure. Real life data are considered, preference patterns are analysed and a smooth estimate is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private matters of the heart are the focus of “Beautifully Imperfect,” a Singapore government-led public communication campaign on love and marriage, part of larger pro-family efforts to reverse low marriage and birth rates. Through a case study based on focus groups, content analysis and interview methods, this study takes a user approach to dialogic theory by evaluating user reactions to and user interaction on Facebook and the manifestation of dialogic strategies and outcomes for relationship cultivation and persuasion. The findings suggest that while the campaign on Facebook meets some technical and design criteria for dialogic relationship-building on the web, Facebook is used merely as a one-way communication channel devoid of dialogue to relay messages from the state to its publics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on the effects of sibling position on marriage timing has produced ambivalent findings, suggesting that birth order effects were contingent on social, local, and historical contexts. Based on a large database of marriage certificates from five Dutch provinces between 1840 and 1922, we examine the influence of birth order on marriage timing. Our main conclusion is that sibling position became less important for marriage timing during the nineteenth century. This trend can be considered part of the transition from the West-European marriage pattern to a marriage pattern characterized by more universal marriage in which personal preferences became more significant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some conservative groups argue that allowing same-sex couples to marry reduces the value of marriage to opposite-sex couples. This article examines how changes in U.S. legal recognition laws occurring between 1995 and 2010 designed to include same-sex couples have altered marriage rates in the United States. Using a difference-in-differences strategy that compares how marriage rates change after legal recognition in U.S. states that alter legal recognition versus states that do not, I find no evidence that allowing same-sex couples to marry reduces the opposite-sex marriage rate. Although the opposite-sex marriage rate is unaffected by same-sex couples marrying, it decreases when domestic partnerships are available to opposite-sex couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of cohabitation in Quebec has attracted the interest of some demographers who have documented it, but why or how Quebec actively adopted this new behavior while it long had a reputation for being conservative in attitudes and behaviors with respect to family is still debated. One view is that this shift is related to an important transformation of the foundation of the normative system shared by the members of its main socio-religious group, French-speaking Catholics. This article is part of a research effort looking for empirical evidence to sustain this claim. Using data from the 1984 National Fertility Survey and from the 1990, 1995, 2001, and 2006 General Social Surveys, we estimate the hazard functions of the formation of the first union by marriage or by cohabitation for ten-year birth cohorts from 1911 to 1981 among several 'normative groups' defined by language, religion, and province of residence. The results support the notion that the demise of the formation of the first union by marriage and its replacement by cohabitation in Quebec is typical of French-speaking Quebecers, among which those who declare themselves Catholic have become similar to those who declare having no religious affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patterns of union formation at the National and Regional level are documented for the first time based on a unique data set. Information on levels and trends in almost every country or territory of the world are monitored by building on the United Nations' World Marriage Data 2008. Union formation has been postponed by an average of 2 years since the 1970s, a pattern observed in all regions. In this way, the developing world in the 2000s resembles more the developed countries in the 1970s than the developing world. There are, however, increasing differences between countries since postponement has been faster in the developed world. Union formation remains almost universal in many regions of the world, with permanent celibacy still low at the global level, but increasing in some parts of the world. Female adolescent marriage and a large age gap between spouses remain high in the least developed countries. Systematic patterns of unbalanced marriage markets characterized by excess male or female celibacy patterns are observed in many countries. Consensual unions are reported in most of the countries of the world with different levels of prevalence, and an effort should be kept at keeping census information relevant by adapting to new patterns of union formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the need for revision of Article 2364 reimbursement claims for student loan debts. Topics discussed include the statistics surrounding education, marriage, and student loan debt in the U.S and community property law in Louisiana, Louisiana's approach to handling reimbursement claims, as well as claims specifically dealing with student loan debt, and student loan debt as an exception to the general rule allowing reimbursement claims.

It has long been argued that the legalization of same-sex marriage would have a negative impact on marriage. In this article, I examine how different-sex marriage in the Netherlands was affected by the enactment of two laws: a 1998 law that provided all couples with an institution almost identical to marriage (a 'registered partnership') and a 2001 law that legalized same-sex marriage for the first time in the world. I first construct a synthetic control for the Netherlands using OECD data for the period 1988-2005 and find that neither law had significant effects on either the overall or different-sex marriage rate. I next construct a unique individual-level data set covering the period 1995-2005 by combining the Dutch Labor Force Survey and official municipal records. The estimates from a discrete-time hazard model with unobserved heterogeneity for the first-marriage decision confirm the findings in the aggregate analysis. The effects of the two laws are heterogeneous, with presumably more-liberal individuals (as defined by their residence or ethnicity) marrying less after passage of both laws and potentially more-conservative individuals marrying more after passage of each law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We simultaneously model cross-sectional and longitudinal differences in intermarriage. [•] Over time, intermarriage increases when structural conditions support intergroup contact. [•] Intermarriage also increase when third-party influence declines over time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]