Relative cohort size: source of a unifying theory of global fertility transition

Using United Nations estimates of age structure and vital rates for 184 countries at five‐year intervals from 1950 through 1995, this article demonstrates how changes in relative cohort size appear to have affected patterns of fertility across countries since 1950—not just in developed countries, but perhaps even more importantly in developing countries as they pass through the demographic transition. The increase in relative cohort size (defined as the proportion of males aged 15–24 relative to males aged 25–59), which occurs as a result of declining mortality rates among infants, children, and young adults during the demographic transition, appears to act as the mechanism that determines when the fertility portion of the transition begins. As hypothesized by Richard Easterlin, the increasing proportion of young adults generates a downward pressure on young men's relative wages (or on the size of landhold‐ings passed on from parent to child), which in turn causes young adults to accept a tradeoff between family size and material wellbeing, setting in motion a “cascade” or “snowball” effect in which total fertility rates tumble as social norms regarding acceptable family sizes begin to change.     

An analysis of variations in U. S. fertility and female labor force participation trends

This study is based on time series data from 1947–1977 on fertility and female labor force participation, and examines (a) the effects of male relative income and female earnings on the level and timing of fertility and female labor force participation, and (b) the relative importance of variations in relative income and female wage rates in explaining the fluctuations in both fertility and female labor supply. The results suggest that relative income exerts a significant positive effect on fertility and a negative effect on female work effort. However, female wage rates appear to be the dominant factor in explaining variations in fertility and female labor force participation over the past two decades, with increases in female earnings leading to both depressed fertility and increased labor force participation of women.     

Relative income and fertility

The present study examines the relationship between relative income (i.e., actual income in relation to the expected income of one’s socioeconomic group) and fertility, using data collected by the 1967-1968Canadian Family Growth Study (Balakrishnan et al., 1975). We broaden the tests of relative income beyond cumulative fertility to spacing behavior and then examine some of the assumptions included in the relative income model of fertility. Results of the tests, in brief, are as follows: (a) Relative income is found to be more closely related to spacing than to cumulative fertility; and (b) the relationship between relative income and fertility is strongest among those couples who plan their life ahead and have a high level of education and occupation, and when temporal alignment is brought between the measures of relative income and fertility. For the relative income model to receive confirmation, it was specified that the following hypotheses must be confirmed: (a) that fertility behavior would vary positively with relative income but the fertility norm would show no relationship with relative income; and (b) that consumption norms and behavior would show no relationship with relative income. The outcome of these tests are in the expected direction, giving support to the relative income model. In addition, there is some evidence of predictive capability of the relative income model for correlative behavior.     

Socioeconomic ramifications of changing cohort size: an analysis of U.S. postwar suicide rates by age and sex

This paper presents a relative cohort size model of suicide. The model states that as relative cohort size (the ratio of younger to older workers) rises, income and income aspirations diverge for the young. One possible extreme reaction to this disequilibrium is suicide. The model explains the variation in age- and sex-specific suicide rates for the United States over the period 1948 to 1976. It identifies the direct effect of changes in cohort size on suicide rates as well as the indirect effect operating through other demographic variables. The model predicts the suicide rates for males above 45 years of age to rise and those for all other groups to decline. For most groups this is a reversal of recent movements in their suicide rates.     

The Role of Family Behaviors in Determining Income Distribution: The Case of South Korea

In this article, we examined what has contributed to the worsening income inequality and poverty between 1996 and 2011 in South Korea. We used a rank-preserving exchange method and a conditional reweighting method to assess the roles of family behaviors—including female labor force participation and family structure—characteristics of household heads, and men’s earnings. The results showed that the change in men’s earnings was a dominant factor in accounting for the increasing income inequality and poverty. The change in age and education among household heads also contributed significantly to the worsening income distribution. The change in family structure mainly affected the income disparity among lower-income families and increased poverty. The rise in women’s labor force participation improved the income distribution but not considerably. The distributional roles of family have not worked to prevent or reverse the worsening income distribution in the past few decades in South Korea.     

Time series analysis of fertility and female labor market behavior

Cointegration methods are employed to investigate relations among total fertility, female wages, labor force participation, educational attainment, and male relative cohort size. Two long run relations among the series are found, and these are identified as a fertility and a labor supply equation. All covariates enter into these relations with significant coefficients and theoretically plausible signs. Innovation analysis shows that both fertility and female labor force participation respond to changes in relative cohort size in directions consistent with the Easterlin hypothesis. Female labor force participation responds significantly to fertility shocks, but reverse effects are insignificant.All correspondence to Robert McNown. The authors wish to thank Cristobal Ridao-Cano, Kenneth Land, Alessandro Cigno, and an anonymous referee for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

Economic development and labor force participation of older persons

The effect of economic development on labor force participation rates of older men and women is examined using national data for 134 countries. The analysis provides new insights into the evolution of retirement patterns with rising personal income, slowing population growth, the aging of the population, and shifts in the composition of employment. The analysis indicates a negative relationship between per capita income and labor force participation rates. This relationship is stronger for older men than for older women and is most apparent among middle income countries. An older population is associated with lower participation rates for older men and higher widow rates produce higher participation rates among older women. Industrial changes such as a decline in the proportion of the labor force employed in agriculture lower the proportion of older persons in the labor force. Finally, national social security policies are shown to impact the proportion of older persons that remains in the labor force.     

Cointegration modeling of fertility in the United States

This paper presents estimates of a multiple time series model of fertility, female labor force participation, women's wages, and the relative cohort size of younger to older adult males. Cointegration methods permit modeling of these nonstationary variables, yielding estimates of the long-run relation among the variables, and the dynamic response of each variable to displacements from the steady state. The estimated steady state relation between fertility and the other variables is consistent with economic models of fertility, with fertility negatively related to female wages and male relative cohort size. Fertility responds to cohort size in a manner that is consistent with Easterlin's relative income model of household behavior. Finally, both female labor market variables adjust significantly to departures from the steady state relation, implying that they cannot be treated as exogenous in time series models of fertility.     

A dynamic analysis of women’s employment exits

This research examines women’s rates of leaving a job to become nonemployed (unemployed or out of the labor force) using a stochastic, continuous-time model. The data consist of employment histories of white women constructed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women (1968-1973). The results demonstrate the importance of examining the underlying processes in women’s employment. Several differences are found between the determinants of employment exits and what might be expected from the cross-sectional and panel literature on female labor force participation. The findings also provide evidence of the interdependence of fertility and employment, with young children increasing rates of employment exits and with high wages on ajob decreasing rates ofleaving a job because of a pregnancy. Finally, involuntary employment terminations are examined, and their transition rates are found to decrease with job wages and job tenure and to increase when a woman has children.     

Work, income, the economy, and married fathers as child-care providers

Previous research on fathers as child-care providers indicates a need to study the father’s role in child care in the context of different economic cycles. Using data from the 1988, 1991, and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine whether father’ availability and the couple’s economic resources are differentially related to child care by fathers over time. We focus on the differences between 1991—a recession year—and 1988 and 1993—two nonrecession years. Increased availability of fathers is significantly related to higher levels of fathers’ participation in child care in all three years. Relative economic resources between husbands and wives help explain care by fathers only during the recession year, whereas family income is important only in the nonrecession years. These results suggest that in the future, researchers should acknowledge fluctuations in the economy when studying husbands’ participation in traditional female tasks, as macroeconomic shifts appear to impact the likelihood of married fathers caring for their preschoolers during mothers’ working hours.     

当代劳动力参与水平和模式变动研究

文章以世界劳工组织和联合国发布的劳动力参与相关数据为基础,应用STATA面板数据模型和AMOS结构方程模型,对当代分性别劳动力参与水平和模式变动趋势及其影响因素进行分析。研究发现,当代男性劳动力参与率持续降低,女性劳动力参与率先升后降。转变的基本规律是向劳动力参与时间不断缩短,学习和自由发展时间不断延长的方向发展。经济、教育、低龄组的劳动力参与率和人口年龄结构对这一转变有重要影响。加强学习型社会建设,普遍提高受教育年限,降低低龄组、次低龄组的劳动力参与率,在增加劳动力数量、质量供给方面具有根本性作用。     

Mobility,Stagnation, or Attrition? Diverse Earning Trajectories in a Cohort of Foreign‐born Men

Researchers and policymakers frequently debate about the integration of immigrants into the US economy. These debates are often based on limited data that do not capture the diversity of immigrants who arrived in the later twentieth century. Related research has also struggled to incorporate the experience of short‐term immigrants or immigrants who move in and out of the labor force. Using records from the Social Security Administration, we track the complete cohort of foreign‐born men who received social security numbers in 1978 through their subsequent working years and characterize their earning trajectories. We find that the share of foreign‐born men with low earnings declined over time, mainly due to attrition from the formal labor force. We also show, for the first time, that immigrants’ employment and earning histories vary considerably by their countries of origin: while those from several countries in Asia and Africa experienced substantial earnings growth and tended to stay in the United States for the long term, men from Central America and the Caribbean experienced more stagnation and had high levels of temporary and permanent attrition from the formal labor force. We end by discussing the historical contingencies and socioeconomic contexts—in sending countries and the United States—that shaped these trajectories.     

Local labor markets,children and labor force participation of wives

Most research on married women’s labor force participation relates characteristics of individual women to their probability of labor force participation. Some studies relate characteristics of geographic areas to average labor force participation rates in those areas, although these aggregate level analyses are usually gross tests of ideas about individuallevel processes. Here we take a quintessentially sociological perspective and seek to understand how characteristics of geographic areas structure the relationship between properties of individual women and their probabilities oflabor force participation. Our analysis has two steps. In step one, we fit individual-level probit models of married women’s probability of labor force participation. A separate model is fitted in each of 409 areas using 1970 Census data, and the relationship between individual characteristics and labor force participation is found to vary substantially across areas. In step two, we attempt to explain areal variation in the effects of women’s children on their labor force participation. We hypothesize that the effect of children on their mothers’ labor force participation is a function ofthe cost and availability of childcare, and of the “convenience” of jobs for working mothers in the places where the mothers live. Measures of childcare cost, childcare availability and job convenience are developed. Weighted least squares analyses of probit coefficients from the first stage are, in general, very consistent with our findings, and suggest that the approach taken in this paper is likely to be a fruitful one for future studies.     

母亲劳动供给行为与中国农村儿童健康

本文使用"中国家庭营养与健康调查"(CHNS)数据,测度了母亲劳动供给行为对于中国农村儿童健康的影响,重点研究了全职和兼职母亲在儿童不同的年龄阶段进入劳动力市场对于儿童健康的影响。研究结果显示:母亲进入劳动力市场并不必然导致母亲照料儿童时间的减少,从事兼职工作的母亲由于工作的灵活性对于儿童的照料甚至比不参加工作的母亲更为充分;此外,在母亲劳动收入增加的正效应的作用下,母亲从事全职、兼职工作对于儿童健康有正的影响,但兼职工作的影响并不显著。在控制住儿童健康对于母亲劳动供给的反作用之后发现,母亲在儿童0～2岁阶段进入劳动力市场会对儿童健康产生负面影响,但影响在统计上并不显著。     

Some population characteristics of villages differentiated by size,location, and growth

Selected social characteristics of individuals were examined for groups of villages simultaneously dichotomized by size, location relative to larger cities, and population change. The percent of people having a selected characteristic in each village group of the resulting eight-fold classification was taken as the dependent variable, and difference scores indicating main effects and first order interactions were obtained for each characteristic. The universe is the 375 incorporated places under 2500 in 1950outside the SMSAs of Wisconsin. Size of place was found to be important for the sex ratio, education and income levels, and labor force and occupational variables. Characteristics associated with nearness to a large city included income, male labor force participation, occupation, and industry. Growth was important for age and sex differences, education, income, and some labor force, occupation, and industry variables. An interaction between location and growth was found for several occupation and industry characteristics. The consistency between some of the results and previous research on larger places supports the contention that villages, although classified as rural, share many characteristics of urban centers. The industry and occupation differences by location, and the interaction between location and growth, strongly suggest that location is tied closely to function here. Places near cities over 25,000, especially those that are growing, may serve as residences for commuting blue-collar workers, or perhaps as small manufacturing centers, while most places more remote from cities continue to function as small service centers for a rural hinterland.     

The Role of Relative Cohort Size and Relative Income in the Demographic Transition

This paper summarizes the results of other analyses by the author with regard to the importance of relative cohort size (RCS) in determining male relative income (the income of young adults relative to prime-age workers) and general patterns of economic growth, and in turn influencing fertility in the currently more-developed nations. It then goes on to demonstrate that these same effects appear to have been operating in all of the one hundred-odd nations which have experienced the fertility transition since 1950. Parameter estimates based on the experience of all 189 countries identified by the United Nations between 1950 and 1995 are used to simulate the effects on fertility of migration from Third to First World countries. This exercise suggests that we get the best of all possible outcomes with migration: population is reduced in “overcrowded” Third World nations, total world population growth is substantially reduced, and scores of children are given the opportunity of growing up with all the educational and health advantages of U.S. residents.     

Aspirations,achievements and life satisfaction

A statistical model is formulated and tested empirically in an effort to evaluate observed differences in satisfaction levels as a function of relative differences in perceived aspirations and achievements of the individual. Data for testing the model were developed from personal interviews with a random sample of 1946 Oregon adults. Scores for two domains, public safety and income security satisfactions, were employed in this paper. Effects of three independent variables — an individual's sex, income level and age — also were tested. The results show that differences in domain satisfaction seem to occur through different processes, depending on the domain and the independent variable employed. The statistical tests reported provide some information on the theoretical formulation but additional measures are required to provide a more rigorous test of the model.     

Relative Income,Race, and Fertility

If a white husband's income is higher than expected for men of his age, race, education, job characteristics, and region, economic theory predicts higher complete fertility for his wife. In the present study one per cent public use samples from the 1970 Census for California and Hawaii were used to examine the effect of relative income on Japanese, Chinese, and black fertility. Relative income was defined in two ways: (1) with regard to earnings of husbands of the same race, education, employment, and state; (2) with regard to earnings of white husbands of the same education, employment, and state. High relative incomes defined in each way were associated with increased completed fertility of Japanese and Chinese in Hawaii, where Orientals form a majority. Neither definition of high relative income was associated with the completed fertility of Japanese, Chinese, or blacks in California, where non-whites form a minority. The results suggest that the effect of relative income on fertility for a racial group will be positive only where there are few racial barriers to their attainment of high incomes.     

What will 1984 be like? Socioeconomic implications of recent twists in age structure

Since 1940, under conditions of restricted immigration and high and sustained growth in aggregate demand, shifts in the relative number of younger versus older adults have had a pervasive impact on American life. Before 1960, younger males were in increasingly short supply and their relative economic position substantially improved; after 1960, the opposite was true. Since the early sixties, as the relative condition of young adults has deteriorated, marriage has been increasingly deferred and fertility reduced. The labor force participation of young women has risen at above average rates, and that of older women has risen at below average rates. Changes in the age structure of the working age population have also contributed to a combination of rising unemployment and accelerating inflation. Cohort divorce rates, suicide among young males, crime rates, and political alienation have worsened. The rise in college enrollment rates has been interrupted, and SAT scores have declined. In contrast, in the period 1940–1960, changes in these various magnitudes were typically of a more favorable sort. The United States is now at the start of a new period of growing scarcity of young adults as a result of the birth rate decline that set in after 1960. This implies that the 1980s will see a turnaround or amelioration in a wide variety of these social, political, and economic conditions, some of which have been taken as symptomatic of a hardening social malaise.     

Facilitating longer working lives: International evidence on why and how

The article advances the view that social and economic choices in societies can reasonably adjust as the age structure of the population changes; in particular, some of the bounty of longer lives can reasonably be allocated to prolonging the labor force participation of older workers. Data on reductions in mortality and, in some countries, declines in disability are presented in ways that help to clarify that prolonged working lives may be a natural concomitant of living longer. The article reviews the problems inherent in the combination of living longer and reducing labor force participation at older ages. It discusses two ways to facilitate longer working lives: (1) eliminating penalties on work at older ages—inherent in the provisions of the social security programs in many countries—that induce older persons to leave the labor force at younger ages; and (2) correcting a false rationale—the “boxed economy” view of the labor market—that is often used to support retention of the provisions that induce older persons to leave the labor force.