Age at marriage and marital instability: revisiting the Becker–Landes–Michael hypothesis

An early age at first marriage is known to be associated with a high risk of divorce. Yet, it has been suggested that beyond a certain point, the relationship between age at marriage and marital instability may become positive because as unmarried women begin to hear their biological clock tick, they may settle for matches far from the optimal. Analyses based on cycles 5 and 6 of the National Surveys of Family Growth show that the relationship between age at marriage and marital instability is strongly negative up to the late 20s, with a flattening of the curve thereafter.

Risk preferences and the timing of marriage and childbearing

The existing literature on marriage and fertility decisions pays little attention to the roles played by risk preferences and uncertainty. However given uncertainty regarding the availability of suitable marriage partners, the ability to contracept, and the ability to conceive, women's risk preferences might be expected to play an important role in marriage and fertility timing decisions. By using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), I find that measured risk preferences have a significant effect on the timing of both marriage and fertility. Highly risk-tolerant women are more likely to delay marriage, consistent with either a search model of marriage or a risk-pooling explanation. In addition, risk preferences affect fertility timing in a way that differs by marital status and education, and that varies over the life cycle. Greater tolerance for risk leads to earlier births at young ages, consistent with these women being less likely to contracept effectively. In addition, as the subgroup of college-educated, unmarried women nears the end of their fertile periods, highly risk-tolerant women are likely to delay childbearing relative to their more risk-averse counterparts and are therefore less likely to become mothers. These findings may have broader implications for both individual and societal well-being.     

Changing educational inequalities in india in the context of affirmative action

Indian society suffers from substantial inequalities in education, employment, and income based on caste and ethnicity. Compensatory or positive discrimination policies reserve 15% of the seats in institutions of higher education and state and central government jobs for people of the lowest caste, the Scheduled Caste; 7.5% of the seats are reserved for the Scheduled Tribe. These programs have been strengthened by improved enforcement and increased funding in the 1990s. This positive discrimination has also generated popular backlash and on-the-ground sabotage of the programs. This paper examines the changes in educational attainment between various social groups for a period of nearly 20 years to see whether educational inequalities have declined over time. We use data from a large national sample survey of over 100,000 households for each of the four survey years--1983, 1987-1988, 1993-1994, and 1999-2000--and focus on the educational attainment of children and young adults aged 6-29. Our results show a declining gap between dalits, adivasis, and others in the odds of completing primary school. Such improvement is not seen for Muslims, a minority group that does not benefit from affirmative action. We find little improvement in inequality at the college level. Further, we do not find evidence that upper-income groups, the so-called creamy layer of dalits and adivasis, disproportionately benefit from the affirmative action programs at the expense of their lower-income counterparts.     

Statistical consulting

The paper and the special issue focus on the activity of statistical consulting and its varieties. This includes academic consulting, consulting to and in industry as well as statistics in public media.     

Stages of the Demographic Transition from a Child's Perspective: Family Size,Cohort Size,and Children's Resources

This article provides a new characterization of stages of the demographic transition from the perspective of children competing for resources within families and cohorts. In Stage 1 falling mortality increases the size of both families and birth cohorts. In Stage 2 falling fertility overtakes falling mortality to reduce family size, but population momentum causes continued growth in cohort size. In Stage 3 falling fertility overtakes population momentum to produce declining cohort size. We apply our framework to census microdata for eight countries and to United Nations population projections for a larger set of countries. The results suggest that most countries spend two to three decades in Stage 2, with declining family size offset by increasing cohort size. From the perspective of children aged 9–11, many countries enter Stage 3 between 2000 and 2010. Other countries, especially in Africa, will continue to experience increasing cohort size for several more decades.     

The City of Saskatoon’s Local Area Planning Program: A Case Study

The City of Saskatoon’s Local Area Planning (LAP) Program is a community-based approach to developing comprehensive neighbourhood plans. In order to achieve sustainable and implementable Local Area Plans (LAPs), the City of Saskatoon has been using innovative methods of collaborative decision-making to engage citizens. The program has been recognized nationally by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for demonstrating innovative approaches to citizen engagement in Sustainable Community Planning. A total of eight LAPs have been adopted by City Council and 212 recommendations have been approved, with 101 of these recommendations being completed, 71 currently in progress and 40 to be determined. Great strides have been made to implement the LAPs by allocating resources for coordinating implementation, working with communities, and for implementing the various recommendations. In addition, over 1,000 people representing various interests have participated in one or more LAP Committee or implementation meetings. Through this participation, partnerships have been formed, program and service delivery has been improved, and most importantly, communities have taken ownership of their plans. After completing eight LAPs, the LAP communities, City Council and city planners have felt the need to measure ongoing changes and progress in the LAP communities. In recognition of this, the City of Saskatoon’s City Planning Branch will be working with LAP communities, the Community-University Institute for Social Research (CUISR) and other stakeholders to develop a framework for statistically measuring changes in LAP communities and to monitor “Neighbourhood Success Factors”. The Neighbourhood Success Factors will work to detect serious socio-economic conditions before they reach a point of crisis. This paper will first describe the LAP Program before reviewing the proposed framework for statistically measuring changes in Saskatoon’s neighbourhoods.

Some results on optimality in models with heteroscedastic errors from partial optimum designs

This paper studies optimum designs for linear models when the errors are heteroscedastic. Sufficient conditions are given in order to obtainD-, A- andE-optimum designs for a complete regression model from partial optimum designs for some sub-parameters. A result about optimality for a complete model from the optimality for the submodels is included. Supported by Junta de Andalucía, research group FQM244.