Gender, Job Searching, and Employment Outcomes among Mexican Immigrants

Past quantitative research has typically disregarded the effect of gender on the relationship between social capital and immigrant adaptation. However, recent theory and qualitative evidence suggest that gender is a significant factor moderating this association. I use Mexican Migration Project (MMP) data regarding Mexican immigrant experiences in the U.S. to examine quantitatively how the process of job searching, and the effects of network-based job searching, vary by gender. Results show no evidence of overall sex differences in the likelihood of using network (i.e., family-based or friend-based) or individual (i.e., non-network) job search methods, but there are sex differences in the processes affecting job search method used. Settlement increases women’s use of their friend networks to obtain work, while for men, it decreases the use of networks of any kind. Contrary to conventional wisdom, women who use network-based job searches are less likely to obtain formal sector employment than women who find work without network assistance. Conversely, using network-based job searches increases the likelihood that men will find work in the formal sector. Since employment in the formal sector is correlated with wages, as well as nonwage benefits, this suggests that using networks in the job search has markedly different effects on the overall economic well-being of male and female Mexican immigrants in the U.S.     

The Gendered Double Standard of Aging in US Marriage Markets

Using data on marriages collected in most US states between 1970 and 1988, we show that the older men are when they marry, the more years senior to their brides they are, whether it is a first or higher‐order marriage. While older men with more education marry down in age slightly more than less educated older men, the pattern of men marrying further down if they marry later holds strongly for all education groups. We consider several possible explanations for the tendency of men to marry further down in age if they are older at marriage. While we have no direct measure of physical attractiveness, we argue that the most compelling interpretation is that men, more than women, evaluate potential spouses on the basis of appearance. Because the prevailing standard of beauty favors young women, the older men are when they marry, the less they find women their own age attractive relative to younger women, leading them to marry further down in age if they are older at marriage. The consequence for women of men's preference for youth is more often that they remain unmarried than that they end up married to much older or less educated men.     

Economic opportunities,marriage squeezes and the propensity to marry: An economic analysis of period marriage rates in England and Wales

An economic model of the decision to marry has been developed by Gary Becker and is now part of the ‘new home economics’. From it one can deduce that the propensity to marry is a function of the relative earning capacities of men and women, the relative scarcity of unmarried persons of the opposite sex and real income. The effects of changes in these variables on the annual first marriage rates of men aged 16–19, 20–24 and 25–29 and women aged 16–19 and 20–24 respectively are estimated over the post-war period. It is found that women's earning capacity relative to men's has a particularly strong negative effect on marriage rates, and that the decline in first marriage rates during the 1970s was primarily attributable to the growing economic opportunities for women. As demographic studies have suggested, the relative numbers of bachelors and spinsters of particular ages (‘marriage squeezes’) also have a significant impact, and there is evidence of substitution in the ages of marriage partners in response to such ‘squeezes’. The income elasticity of marriage is only found to be significant among men below age 25 and women below age 20, and it increases as we move down the age distribution. This suggests the ‘liquidity constraints’ influence the timing of marriage among young people. In sum, this economic model is able to account for over 90 per cent of the post-war variation in young persons' marriage rates.     

Late Marriage and Less Marriage in Japan

Between 1975 and 1995, the singulate mean age at marriage in Japan increased from 24.5 to 27.7 years for women and from 27.6 to 30.7 years for men, making Japan one of the latest‐marrying populations in the world. Over the same period, the proportion of women who will never marry, calculated from age‐specific first‐marriage probabilities pertaining to a particular calendar year, increased from 5 to 15 percent for women and from 6 to 22 percent for men—behaviors sharply different from those characterizing the universal‐marriage society of earlier years. This article investigates how and why these changes have come about. The reasons are bound up with rapid educational gains by women, massive increases in the proportion of women who work for pay outside the home, major changes in the structure and functioning of the marriage market, extraordinary increases in the prevalence of premarital sex, and far‐reaching changes in values relating to marriage and family life.     

Demography of the marriage market in the United States

In this paper, a new index designed to measure the relative availability of unmarried men and women is introduced. Termed the "Availability Ratio," the measure is defined as the number of suitable persons divided by the average competition. Suitability, in turn, is defined in terms of race, age and education. After various experimental tests, particular age and eeducational constraints were empirically derived from marriage data. Persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters are tested as unavailable. Estimates are also made of those presumed to be unsuitable on the basis of the % of persons aged 45-74 who have never married. Adjustments for the census undercount are given. 1980 and 1970 estimates are presented for the US population. Subsequent analyses will focus on metropolitan areas, which are more likely to function as actual marriage markets in contrast to the nation as a whole. The substantive evidence indicates that women under 25 are in a good position to find a mate, but that after this age, their prospects deteriorate rapidly. The outlook is especially poor for the more educated women at older ages, especially black women. At ages 40-49, for example, there are fewer than 3 suitable men available for every 10 college-educated women. The results suggest that the combination of preferences of women for older men (or men's tastes for younger women), combined with higher survival rates for women at older ages, results in a very unbalanced market situationn for all but the youngest cohorts of men and women.     

Does It Matter What She Wants? The Role of Individual Preferences Against Unmarried Motherhood in Young Women’s Likelihood of a Nonmarital First Birth

Most young people in the United States express the desire to marry. Norms at all socioeconomic levels posit marriage as the optimal context for childbearing. At the same time, nonmarital fertility accounts for approximately 40 % of U.S. births, experienced disproportionately by women with educational attainment less than a bachelor’s degree. Research has shown that women’s intentions for the number and timing of children and couples’ intent to marry are strong predictors of realized fertility and marriage. The present study investigates whether U.S. young women’s preferences about nonmarital fertility, as stated before childbearing begins, predict their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth. I track marriage and fertility histories through ages 24–30 of women asked at ages 11–16 whether they would consider unmarried childbearing. One-quarter of women who responded “no” in fact had a nonmarital birth by age 24–30. The ability of women and their partners to access material resources in adulthood were, as expected, the strongest predictors of the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Nonetheless, I find that women who said they would not consider nonmarital childbearing had substantially higher hazards of fertility postponement and especially of marital fertility, even after controlling for race/ethnicity, mother’s educational attainment, family of origin intactness, self-efficacy and planning ability, perceived future prospects, and markers of own educational attainment and work experience into early adulthood.     

How female education affects reproductive behavior in urban Pakistan

Although Pakistan remains in a pretransitional stage (contraceptive prevalence of only 11.9% among married women in 1992), urban women with post-primary levels of education are spearheading the gradual move toward fertility transition. Data collected in the city of Karachi in 1987 were used to determine whether the inverse association between fertility and female education is attributable to child supply variables, demand factors, or fertility regulation costs. Karachi, with its high concentration of women with secondary educations employed in professional occupations, has a contraceptive prevalence rate of 31%. Among women married for less than 20 years, a 10-year increment in education predicts that a woman will average two-fifths of a child less than other women in the previous 5 years. Regression analysis identified 4 significant intervening variables in the education-fertility relationship: marriage duration, net family income, formal sector employment, and age at first marriage. Education appears to affect fertility because it promotes a later age at marriage and thus reduces life-time exposure to the risk of childbearing, induces women to marry men with higher incomes (a phenomenon that either reduces the cost of fertility regulation or the demand for children), leads women to become employed in the formal sector (leading to a reduction in the demand for children), and has other unspecified effects on women's values or opportunities that are captured by their birth cohort. When these intervening variables are held constant, women's attitude toward family planning loses its impact on fertility, as do women's domestic autonomy and their expectations of self-support in old age. These findings lend support to increased investments in female education in urban Pakistan as a means of limiting the childbearing of married women. Although it is not clear if investment in female education would have the same effect in rural Pakistan, such action is important from a human and economic development perspective.     

Job,family, and gender: Determinants of nonstandard work schedules among employed Americans in 1991

This study provides the most recent national estimates of the prevalence of employment during nonstandard hours (evenings, nights, or rotating hours) and on weekends. It also examines in a multivariate context the relevance of job and family characteristics as determinants of such employment, separately for men and for women. The findings support the contention that the demand for employment during nonstandard hours and weekends is pervasive throughout the occupational hierarchy, but particularly in service occupations and in personal service industries and for both men and .women. Gender differences exist, however, in the relevance of family factors. Being married reduces women’s but not men’s likelihood of employment during nonstandard hours, and the presence of children affects women’s but not men’s hours and days of employment. (The direction of the effect for women depends on the children’s age.) Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Turning back the ticking clock: the effect of increased affordability of assisted reproductive technology on women’s marriage timing

This paper exploits variation in the mandated insurance coverage of assisted reproductive technology (ART) across US states and over time to examine the connection between increased access to ART and female marriage timing. Since ART increases the probability of pregnancy for older women of reproductive age, greater access to ART will make marriage delay less costly for younger single women of reproductive age. Linear probability models are estimated to investigate the effects of ART state insurance mandates on changes in marital status of women in different age groups using the 1977–2010 Current Population Survey. Results show that greater access to ART is associated with marital delay for white (but not for black) women: white women in states with an ART insurance mandate are significantly less likely to marry between the 20–24, 25–29, and 30–34 age ranges, but significantly more likely to marry between the 30–34 and 35–39 age ranges.     

Demographic aspects of fertility in Thailand

Abstract Data from a national rural and urban sample survey are analysed in order to examine various demographic aspects of fertility in Thailand. Marital fertility rates found for Thailand are among the highest in Asia. Particularly noteworthy is the persistence of high fertility at older ages of childbearing for rural women. Cumulative fertility shows a pronounced relationship with age at marriage and current marital status. Women who marry at an older age or who experience disruption of their marriages are clearly more likely to have fewer children ever born. Differences in both current and cumulative fertility are strongly associated with residence. Rural women who constitute the vast majority of Thai women, experience the highest fertility, Bangkok-Thonburi women experience the lowest fertility and provincial urban women are characterized by an intermediate fertility level which is closer, however, to the experience of their counterparts in the capital than in the countryside. Rural-urban fertility differences are mitigated but by no means eliminated by differences in infant mortality. In both rural and urban areas a positive association between cumulative fertility and infant morality is evident. Breast-feeding, commonly practised for extended periods-among both rural and urban Thai women, undoubtedly serves to some extent as an intervening variable in this relationship. A comparison of current fertility with cumulative fertility strongly suggests that a decline in marital fertility has been under way recently among urban women, especially those residing in the capital, but not at all among rural women. Although it seems safe to assume that the urban fertility decline results in large part from an increasing use of contraception among urban women, those still in the reproductive ages who were using or had previously used birth control were characterized by higher cumulative fertility than women who had never practised contraception. Evidently couples resort to family planning only late in the family building process after they have already achieved or exceeded the number of children they wish to have.     

Family transitions in Young Adulthood

Using the first (1995) and third (2001-2002) waves of the Add Health survey, we examine women 's family transitions up to age 24. Only a third of all women marry, and a fifth of those marriages dissolve before age 24. Three out of eight women have afirst birth, with a substantial majority of those births outside of marriage: 66% for whites, 96% for blacks, and 72% for Mexican Americans. Cohabitation is the predominant union form; 59% of women cohabit at least once by age 24. Most cohabitations are short lived, with approximately one in five resulting in a marriage. We summarize the family and relationship experience of women up to age 24 in terms offour categories, each accounting for roughly a quarter of all women. Category 1 has the women who remain single nonparents. Category 2 has the early marriers, women whose marriage is not preceded by a first birth. Category 3 has those who become single parents. Category 4 has the women who cohabit at least once, but who do not marry or have a birth by age 24. The strictly ordered transitions of the 1950s are long gone and have been replaced by a variety of paths to adulthood.     

Catholicism and marriage in the united states

This study examines the effects of a Catholic background on age at first marriage, the odds of never marrying, and the odds of ever divorcing. Estimates using Catholic upbringing are compared with estimates using Catholic at the time of the survey. A case is made that if the latter measure of Catholicism is used, serious selection bias problems occur in some cases because this measure excludes defectors and includes converts. Further, it is shown that a Catholic upbringing generally has no effect on men’s age at first marriage and has a positive effect on the age when women marry. It is also shown that older Baptist men are substantially more likely than Catholic men to experience a divorce. Older Catholic women are somewhat less likely to experience a divorce than non-Baptist Protestant women. There is no Catholic effect on the odds that younger men and women will divorce.     

International marriages in South Korea: The significance of nationality and ethnicity

International marriage has increased drastically in South Korea in recent years, and by 2005, 13.6 per cent of marriages involved a foreign spouse. The purpose of this study is twofold: to explore the demographic demand and supply of foreign spouses in the marriage market in South Korea, and to examine how social positions of foreign wives vary by their place in the marriage market as determined by their nationality and ethnicity. Data show that the demand for foreign spouses is particularly strong among rural never-married and urban divorced Korean men. Among foreign wives, Chinese, especially Korean Chinese, tend to marry divorced Koreans, partly because many of them have also been married before. The Korean Chinese are the most autonomous among five groups of foreign wives examined, showing the highest rates of Korean citizenship, divorce-separation, and employment. Southeast Asian women tend to marry rural never-married men, and they are the most adaptive to the host society in the way they show among the highest rates of Korean citizenship and employment (after controlling for their poor Korean proficiency and short duration in Korea). Their divorce-separation rate is the lowest regardless of such control. This study demonstrates that marriage migrants adaptation to the host society differs significantly by nationality and ethnic origin.     

Mortality Differentials by Marital Status: An International Comparison

Although the greater longevity of married people as compared with unmarried persons has been demonstrated repeatedly, there have been very few studies of a comparative nature. We use log-linear rate models to analyze marital-status-specific death rates for a large number of developed countries. The results indicate that divorced persons, especially divorced men, have the highest death rates among the unmarried groups of the respective genders; the excess mortality of unmarried persons relative to the married has been generally increasing over the past two to three decades; and divorced and widowed persons in their twenties and thirties have particularly high risks of dying, relative to married persons of the same age. In addition, the analysis suggests that a selection process is operating with regard to single and divorced persons: the smaller the proportion of persons who never marry or who are divorced, the higher the resulting death rates.     

The labor supply of Latinas in the USA: Comparing labor force participation, wages, and hours worked with Anglo and Black women

This study explores the determinants of labor supply patterns among Latinas in the USA. We use recent microeconomic data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics/Latino National Political Survey (PSID-LNPS) to estimate models of labor force participation, wages, and hours worked for a sample of Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican women. We estimate the same models for Anglo and Black women in order to explore ethnic differences in the impact of characteristics affecting both the reservation and the market wage. We find that differences exist in the return to characteristics, such as education, but that there are also substantial differences in the levels of those characteristics across ethnic groups. The low wage rates and labor market activity of Latinas relative to Anglo and Black women are thus likely to be the combined result of lower investments in human capital and larger family size, the greater negative impact of macroeconomic conditions, and a stronger responsiveness to wages. Among Latinas, we find that there are differences in labor market outcomes between national origin and nativity groups. We also find that age at arrival and years in the USA play a role in labor supply, and that this is particularly true for Puerto Rican women.     

Convergence and determinants of non-employment durations in Eastern and Western Germany

Since monetary union between eastern and western Germany in 1990, non-employment spells have been shorter in the east, and there has been no convergence. Analysis of the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1990–2000 indicates that there is some convergence in the determinants of durations, owing to increasing age differentials for eastern men, and an increasing influence of children for eastern women. The latter has contributed to the decline in female employment. Skill affects non-employment duration less than it affects employment duration, and the gender gap in eastern non-employment duration cannot be characterized as a skills gap.I am very grateful to Ann Huff Stevens, Rachel Friedberg, Daniel Parent and Chris Sims for helpful discussions. I also thank participants in seminars at Boston College, Bristol, Essex, London School of Economics, University College London, and Warwick for comments on an earlier version. I am indebted to Yunning Xu for research assistance, and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies for financial support. I am also affiliated with the following institutes: NBER, CEPR, IZA, William Davidson, DIW, CIREQ and CIRANO. Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt     

Divorce,living arrangements,and material well-being during the transition to adulthood in rural Malawi

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women’s own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women’s post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage.     

Gender and the Neighborhood Location of Mixed-Race Couples

Gender asymmetry in mixed-race heterosexual partnerships and marriages is common. For instance, black men marry or partner with white women at a far higher rate than white men marry or partner with black women. This article asks if such gender asymmetries relate to the racial character of the neighborhoods in which households headed by mixed-race couples live. Gendered power imbalances within households generally play into decisions about where to live or where to move (i.e., men typically benefit more than women), and we find the same in mixed-race couple arrangements and residential attainment. Gender interacts with race to produce a measurable race-by-gender effect. Specifically, we report a positive relationship between the percentage white in a neighborhood and the presence of households headed by mixed-race couples with a white male partner. The opposite holds for households headed by white-blacks and white-Latinos if the female partner is white; they are drawn to predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods. The results have implications for investigations of residential location attainment, neighborhood segregation analysis, and mixed-race studies.     

Education and survival: Birth cohort,period, and age effects

Previous studies have found that educational differences in mortality are weaker among the elderly. In this study I examine whether either cohort or period effects may have influenced the interpretation of age effects. Six 10-year birth cohorts are followed over 30 years through decennial censuses. Differential survival is inferred from changes in the relative proportions of a cohort in each education category as the cohort ages. In cross-section, younger persons generally show stronger education effects on survival, although this pattern is clearer for women than for men. There is evidence of period effects. Within cohorts, relative survival tends to increase with age.     

Pathways of Early Fatherhood,Marriage, and Employment: A Latent Class Growth Analysis

In the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), young fathers include heterogeneous subgroups with varying early life pathways in terms of fatherhood timing, the timing of first marriage, and holding full-time employment. Using latent class growth analysis with 10 observations between ages 18 and 37, we derived five latent classes with median ages of first fatherhood below the cohort median (26.4), constituting distinct early fatherhood pathways representing 32.4% of NLSY men: (A) Young Married Fathers, (B) Teen Married Fathers, (C) Young Underemployed Married Fathers, (D) Young Underemployed Single Fathers, and (E) Young Later-Marrying Fathers. A sixth latent class of men who become fathers around the cohort median, following full-time employment and marriage (On-Time On-Sequence Fathers), is the comparison group. With sociodemographic background controlled, all early fatherhood pathways show disadvantage in at least some later-life circumstances (earnings, educational attainment, marital status, and incarceration). The extent of disadvantage is greater when early fatherhood occurs at relatively younger ages (before age 20), occurs outside marriage, or occurs outside full-time employment. The relative disadvantage associated with early fatherhood, unlike early motherhood, increases over the life course.