Comparing alternative statistics on recent fertility trends in Australia

In recent years fertility statistics in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publication Births, Australia have suffered from a number of issues, including delayed receipt of registration data from the Registrars and computer processing errors. They prompt questions about the quality of these statistics for measuring the level of fertility and its year-to-year changes. The aim of this paper is to compare three sets of fertility statistics, (1) ABS birth registrations, (2) ABS births by year of occurrence, and (3) births in the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare National Perinatal Data Collection (NPDC), at the national and state/territory scales. Annual births by state/territory of usual residence from the three data sources were obtained for the period 2004–2013 or 2004–2014. Recast Estimated Resident Populations from the ABS were used to calculate Total Fertility Rates. For some states and territories there are non-trivial differences in fertility as recorded by the three data sources. In Queensland the trend in fertility according to ABS birth registrations is quite different from that based on the NPDC; in Tasmania and the Northern Territory birth registrations exceed NPDC births by a notable margin. There appears to be more uncertainty about the levels and annual changes in Australian fertility than many users of the data may realise. All three fertility datasets seem to possess some limitations. It is suggested that a new Australian fertility database be created which employs data linkage to incorporate both birth registrations and perinatal data.     

Long-run trends of human aging and longevity

Over the last 200 years, humans experienced a huge increase of life expectancy. These advances were largely driven by extrinsic improvements of their environment (for example, the available diet, disease prevalence, vaccination, and the state of hygiene and sanitation). In this paper, we ask whether future improvements of life expectancy will be bounded from above by human life span. Life span, in contrast to life expectancy, is conceptualized as a biological measure of longevity driven by the intrinsic rate of bodily deterioration. In order to pursue our question, we first present a modern theory of aging developed by bio-gerontologists and show that immutable life span would put an upper limit on life expectancy. We then show for a sample of developed countries that human life span thus defined was indeed constant until the mid-twentieth century but increased since then in sync with life expectancy. In other words, we find evidence for manufactured life span.     

Fertility trends in Australia

Using published data from the Australian vital registration and census systems, several time series are compiled: crude birth rates from the 1860s; fertility rates from the 1880s; age-specific and parity-specific measures from the 191Os; cumulative fertility measures by birth year of parent beginning with the 1890s; and cumulative fertility measures for marriages by year contracted from the 1910s.The decline in fertility to the 1930s, the upswing to 1961, and declines thereafter revealed by annual fertility measures show far more variation than do measures of total generation fertility—2.7 children per woman born in 1893–95, 2.3 1906–10, 2.8 1921–25, and perhaps 3.0 for women born in the 1930s. Both annual and generation measures show a younger age at parenthood, a decrease in childlessness, and progressively fewer large families. In the light of present experience, it seems not unreasonable to project generation fertility of 2.5 children, implying a crude birth rate of about 20 per thousand for the next fifteen years or so.     

Understanding circulation in Australia

Progress in the nascent field of inquiry concerned with understanding circulation in developed countries requires a balance between individual and aggregate modes of explanation. The sparsity and fragmentation of current studies is traced to the dearth of appropriate data sources and the complexity of circular moves, reflecting the integral connections between data, method and theory in migration research. It is argued that circulation, like permanent migration, can be divided into production-and consumption-related categories, but that measurement of circulation is complicated by three additional features: variable duration, repetition and seasonality. Four dimensions of population movement are identified: intensity of circular migration, movement distances, patterns of redistribution and migration networks. Census and survey data are used to quantify these dimensions. Revised version of Presidential Address to the Tenth Biennial Conference of the Australian Population Association, Melbourne, 29 November 2000.     

Three measures of longevity: Time trends and record values

This article examines the trend over time in the measures of “typical” longevity experienced by members of a population: life expectancy at birth, and the median and modal ages at death. The article also analyzes trends in record values observed for all three measures. The record life expectancy at birth increased from a level of 44 years in Sweden in 1840 to 82 years in Japan in 2005. The record median age at death shows increasing patterns similar to those observed in life expectancy at birth. However, the record modal age at death changes very little until the second half of the twentieth century: it moved from a plateau level, around age 80, to having a similar pace of increase as that observed for the mean and the median in most recent years. These findings explain the previously observed uninterrupted increase in the record life expectancy. The cause of this increase has changed over time from a dominance of child mortality reductions to a dominance of adult mortality reductions, which became evident by studying trends in the record modal age at death.     

Aspects of recent trends in marriage in England and Wales

The purpose of this paper is to investigate recent trends in marriage habits in England and Wales. Special interest has been attached-throughout to comparing the course of developments for the two sexes. The investigation was originally begun because it was noticed that developments in male and female marriage-rates had been very different in the past half-century.     

Household diversity and dynamics of recent immigrants in Australia

The family and friends that immigrants live with are important sources of assistance and support, especially in the period immediately following migration. The paper uses data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to examine the living arrangements of recent immigrants, the transitions in household structure they experience during the first few years of settlement and whether the changes in living arrangements are related to other changes that immigrants experience during the early settlement period such as changes in marital and employment status. Multivariate logistic regression models are used to examine the relation between immigrants’ characteristics and their experience of changes in living arrangements. Many live in extended family households soon after arrival, but set up their own households when they are more settled. Changes in immigrants’ household structure and living arrangements during the first few years of settlement are usually related to age, visa category of migration and change in marital status.     

Long-term trends in the longevity of scientific elites: evidence from the British and the Russian academies of science

National science academies represent intellectual elites and vanguard groups in the achievement of longevity. We estimated life expectancy (LE) at age 50 of members of the British Royal Society (RS) for the years 1670-2007 and of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) for the years 1750-2006. The longevity of academicians was higher than that of their corresponding national populations, with the gap widening from the 1950s. Since the 1980s, LE in the RS has been higher than the maximum LE among all high-income countries. In each period, LE in the RS was greater than in the RAS, although since the 1950s it has risen in parallel in the two academies. This steep increase shared by academicians in Britain and Russia suggests that general populations have the potential for a substantial increase in survival to high ages.     

Racial inequalities in housing: An examiation of recent trends

Changes in racial differences in homeownership and objective indicators of housing quality are examined using 1960 Census data and 1977 Annual Housing Survey data. Blacks, net of differences in socioeconomic status, family composition, and regional-metropolitan location, remained less likely than whites to own homes and somewhat more likely to live in older, crowded and structurally inadequate units in 1977. In general, however, net effects for race were much smaller in 1977 than in 1960. Racial differences in homeownership and crowding were smaller among recent movers than among the total sample in 1977, suggesting continued but gradual improvement in housing conditions for blacks in the latter 1970s.     

Bust after boom: First marriage trends in Australia

Since the early 1970s Australia has experienced a pronounced trend to later and less universal marriage. This stands in sharp contrast to a marriage boom that began with the outbreak of World War II and lasted for three decades. The boom was the product of three sets of forces: those peculiar to wartime, those emerging in the early postwar period and creating a climate favorable to marriage, and those surfacing in the 1960s with the advent of oral contraception. Its reversal is attributed largely to less frequent resort to marriage when premaritally pregnant, the rise of cohabitation as a prelude or alternative to marriage, economic forces hindering family formation, and ideological change.     

Opting for families: recent trends in the fertility of highly educated women

After declining for many years, there are indications that fertility may be increasing among highly educated women. This paper provides a comprehensive study of recent trends in the fertility of college-graduate women. In contrast to most existing work, we find that college graduate women are indeed opting for families. Data from the Current Population Surveys and Vital Statistics Birth Data both show that fertility increases among college graduate women, especially at older ages since the mid- to late 1990s. There are also increases in fertility among less-educated women, but these are concentrated at younger ages.     

The effect of changing demographic composition on recent trends in underemployment

The effect of changing age-sex composition on trends in unemployment and underemployment from 1969 to 1980 is estimated. This effect is positive as anticipated, but negligible in both absolute and relative terms. For example, no more than .35 percent of the increase in unemployment between 1969 and 1980 can be attributed to compositional factors. The secular rise in unemployment and underemployment from the late 1960s into the 1980s simply cannot be attributed in any substantial way to the changing demographic composition of the labor force.     

发展中国家养老保障覆盖面不足的根源分析

在发展中国家,养老保障的扩面及对未保障群体的保护是他们最关心的问题之一,因为在这些国家的大多数劳动者和年老者都没有被正规养老保障计划覆盖。解决这一问题的关键是要分析清楚产生养老保障覆盖面不足的根源,只有这样,发展中国家才能制定出切实可行的政策规定,才能针对性强的扩大养老保障的覆盖面,做到有的放矢。     

Aging in the United Kingdom: a review of demographic trends,recent policy developments and care provision

"Although the U.K.'s population is not predicted to grow very much in the future, the population structure is changing and there is a shift towards a much older age distribution. The characteristics of demographic aging in the U.K. include a marked reduction in fertility rates, increasing rates of life expectation at birth..., increasing dependency ratios and variations in mortality and social class in old age. The U.K.'s demographic context has important implications for aged care policy and planning. This paper documents the demographic trends, reviews recent major policy changes and their impact on care provision, and discusses some of the emerging implementation issues that challenge the potential of such policies to meet the needs of an aging population."     

Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand: Nuptiality trends

Abstract Annual variations are often more brutal for nuptiality than they are for other demographic phenomena. Short-term economic movements, in particular, seem to have a more direct impact. Fig. 1 clearly illustrates this point for Australia during the thirties. Nuptiality rates dip more sharply and recuperation is more pronounced: not only do they follow the employment trend, they amplify it. 1 For nuptiality and fertility, the two indicators we chose are probably the most responsive to short-term movements. They result respectively, from the addition of age-specific first-marriage rates (number of first marriages at age x/total population age x) for ages 15 to 50, and from the combination of parity progression ratios which gives the average number of births per marriage, (a (0)+a (0) a (1)+a (0) a (1) a (2)+ ..., where a (1) is the ratio ofwomen who have a child of order i+1 per 1,000 mothers of children of order i). For each year these were divided by the corresponding cohort index, i.e. the proportion ever-married, and the mean number of ever-born children per marriage. The cohort used for a given year is that which reaches its mean age at first marriage in that year or its mean duration at birth of the children. Nine months are subtracted from the fertility measure to give time of conception. The economic indicator is a measure obtained by dividing the number of jobs by the population aged 15 to 64. All indices are calculated using the 1926-1927 figures as base 100.