Religious Affiliation and Fertility in a Sub-Saharan Context: Dynamic and Lifetime Perspectives

We use uniquely detailed data from a predominantly Christian high-fertility area in Mozambique to examine denominational differentials in fertility from two complementary perspectives—dynamic and cumulative. First, we use event-history analysis to predict yearly risks of birth from denominational affiliation. Then, we employ Poisson regression to model the association between the number of children ever born and share of reproductive life spent in particular denominations or outside organized religion. Both approaches detect a significant increase in fertility associated with membership in a particular type of African-initiated churches which is characterized by strong organizational identity, rigid hierarchy, and insular corporate culture. Membership in the Catholic Church is also associated with elevated completed fertility. We relate these results to extant theoretical perspectives on the relationship between religion and fertility by stressing the interplay between ideological, social, and organizational characteristics of different types of churches and situate our findings within the context of fertility transition and religious demographics in Mozambique and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Contraceptive sterilization in Puerto Rico

For twenty years Puerto Rico has had the world’s highest prevalence of sterilization. From the 1982 Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment we examine whether the probability of obtaining sterilization is changing and what impact sterilization has on fertility, finding that the use of contraceptive sterilization has not declined and will probably continue to increase in Puerto Rico. Nonuse rather than temporary methods of contraception is the second most likely circumstance after sterilization. We also find that sterilization has reduced the total marital fertility rate by over 33 percent, thus having a significant effect on reducing the rate of natural increase; by all indications, it will have a greater effect in the future.     

New money,and old man/lady and ‘Two's company’: Subjective Welfare in the NORC General Social Surveys, 1972–1982

The nine surveys, dozens of variables, and more than ten thousand cases in the NORC General Social Surveys, 1972–1982, allow one to test a variety of cross-sectional and over-time hypotheses about Subjective Welfare (Happiness). I used discrete multivariate analyses to test five hypotheses: (1) the Economist's prediction that Happiness is a function of income; the Sociologist's hypotheses that Happiness is a function of (2) rank on various evaluated dimensions and (3) number of social ties; and the Psychologist's hypotheses that Happiness is affected by (4) social comparisons and (5) adaptation. None of the five is supported impressively, but three variables emerge as good cross-sectional predictors — Race (Blacks are less Happy, but not necessarily because of discrimination), Marital Status (all categories of nonmarried are less happy) and Financial Change (those whose finances are improving are happier, those who finances have turned for the worse are less happy). When Marital Status and Recent Financial Change are used in a year-to-year social indicator model, fluctuations in the predictors produce significant but small changes in Happiness.     

Malthus to modernity: wealth,status, and fertility in England, 1500–1879

A key challenge to theories of long-run economic growth has been linking the onset of modern growth with the move to modern fertility limitation. A notable puzzle for these theories is that modern growth in England began around 1780, 100 years before there was seemingly any movement to limit fertility. Here we show that the aggregate data on fertility in England before 1880 conceals significant declines in the fertility of the middle and upper classes earlier. These declines coincide with the Industrial Revolution and are of the character predicted by some recent theories of long-run growth.     

Emigration and fertility decline: The case of Barbados

This paper examines the role of emigration in the recent fertility declines which have occurred on the island of Barbados. Barbados with a history of over two centuries of out-migration has experienced in the period 1951–1970 very significant migration loss. In the period 1960–1970 and up to the present fertility has been declining. An important question is what part has this net migration loss of 32,600 had on the reduction of the crude birth rate from 33.6 in 1960 or from 31.5 in 1956 to 20.5 in 1970? Using officially published net migration loss figures and supplementing them with data on Barbadians living overseas, we calculated the crude birth rates which would have occurred had there been no migration loss. We also calculated the numbers of births to be expected if certain age-specific fertility rates were maintained and compared these with the births to residents plus the calculated births to Barbadians overseas. We conclude that in both cases emigration is a very significant contributor to the fertility declines which have occurred and are still underway.     

Evaluation of family planning program performance: A critical review

Family Planning Program Evaluation is not a well-developed art, much less an exact science. The evaluation of the performance of such programs has received a good deal of attention but the methodologies are still controversial and the results inconclusive. This is due to a wide variety of constraints, not all of which are technical, and most of which are not unique to family planning. The prospects for improvement of FPPE depend, to a great extent, on overcoming these constraints.     

Rethinking national social reports

Social reporting and social indicators are examined from the point of view of two specific cases, Social Indicators 1976 and Perspective Canada II.     

Social indicators, 1976: A critique

Social Indicators 1976 is reviewed from the point of view of its conceptual framework, data presentation, analysis and interpretation, data quality, variable disaggregation and quality of life measures.     

Nowcasting Indicators of Poverty Risk in the European Union: A Microsimulation Approach

The at-risk-of-poverty rate is one of the three indicators used for monitoring progress towards the Europe 2020 poverty and social exclusion reduction target. Timeliness of this indicator is critical for monitoring the effectiveness of policies. However, due to complicated nature of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) poverty risk estimates are published with a 2–3 years delay. This paper presents a method that can be used to estimate (“nowcast”) the current at-risk-of-poverty rate for the European Union (EU) countries based on EU-SILC microdata from a previous period. The EU tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD is used for this purpose in combination with up to date macro-level statistics. The method is validated by using EU-SILC data for 2007 incomes to estimate at-risk-of-poverty rates for 2008–2012 and to compare the predictions with actual EU-SILC and other external statistics. The method is tested on eight EU countries which are among those experiencing the most volatile economic conditions within the period: Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Romania.     

The Effect of Imputation Procedures on First Birth Intervals: Evidence from Five African Fertility Surveys

In most African societies there is little motivation to remember dates of demographic events with the level of precision required in demographic surveys. Consequently it is common that the large majority of survey respondents can provide only the calendar year of occurrence or their age at the time of the event. The World Fertility Survey Group decided to handle the problem of poor date reporting by using a computer program to impute the missing information. This article illustrates the effect of these imputation procedures on cross-national differentials in the proportion of premarital first births in Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. The analysis demonstrates that the exceptionally low proportion of premarital first births in Ghana is an artifact of the imputation procedures.     

Disparities in levels of regional development in Ghana

The paper highlights the need for the use of indicators other than Gross-Domestic Productive and its derivatives to measure development. It reviews some of the techniques for analysing socio-economic indicators and selects the Wroclow Taxonomic Analysis for more detailed analysis. The main attributes of this technique are presented and the model is then applied to measure the levels of development of the regions in Ghana. Applying the Wroclow Taxonomic Technique to 10 socio-economic variables the paper finds that the Greater Accra Region, which is the seat of the Central Government, is far more developed than any other region. It categorizes the regions into four groups: More Developed Region, Developed Regions, Developing Regions and Less Developed Regions. It thus provides a basis for regional development in Ghana as well as a pattern for equitable distribution of the ten social amenities on a regional basis.     

Urbanization and de-urbanization of the black population before the civil war

Pre-Civil War black urbanization is examined using data from federal census records, 1790 to 1860. The black population is found to be as urban as the white population initially, but its urbanization underwent relative decline in the last two decades before the Civil War. Foreshadowing current patterns, the northern black population was heavily concentrated in the largest cities, and the free black population was the most urban of all groups. The timing of black urban decline in the North, as well as regional and size of place differences in that decline, suggest that both competition with immigrants in major eastern seaboard cities and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 contributed to black de-urbanization. For the South, the explanations of black urban decline proposed by Wade, Conrad and Meyer, Goldin, and Bonacich are evaluated, and Bonacich’s split labor market theory is judged to be most consistent with the demographic trends.     

A review of research on the happiness measures: A sixty second index of happiness and mental health

Eighteen years of research using the Happiness Measures (HM) is reviewed in relation to the general progress of well-being measurement efforts. The accumulated findings on this remarkably quick instrument, show good reliability, exceptional stability, and a record of convergent, construct, and discriminative validity unparalleled in the field. Because of this, the HM is offered as a potential touchstone of measurement consistency in a field which generally lacks it.     

Family planning and population control in developing countries

This essay aims at a critical analysis of the major assumptions of the family planning movement and their implications for population and development policy in the less developed countries. A neo-Malthusian perspective, in which a reduction of the current high rates of population growth is considered to be a necessary condition for economic development in the less developed countries, is dominant among professionals in family planning. Population control has come to be regarded as a kind of“leading sector” in the development process. The position taken in this paper is that the contention that fertility reduction is crucial to short term economic development is not substantiated empirically and represents a distorted view of the economic development process. Nor is there good evidence that demographic modernization can move far ahead of other aspects of modernization. Skepticism about the success of family planning tends to lead to advocacy of alternative methods of population control which are generally beyond the economic, administrative, and political capacities of the less developed countries and are sometimes repressive in tone. The family planning movement, in overstressing the independent contributions of fertility reduction programs, has tended to underplay conditions such as improved health, lowered mortality, and altered opportunity structure which make these contributions possible at all.     

The effect of the Great Blackout of 1965 on births in New York City

A comparison of the number of births in New York City nine months after the Great Blackout of 1965 with comparable periods for the previous five years shows no increase in births associated with the blackout.     

Work ethic and orientations to work of the young generations: The impact of educational level

The present study challenges the view that a new work ethic is widespread among the new generations of young people. A survey among 663 Flemish army recruits covering their attitudes to more traditional work motives and facets of the new work ethic, indicated that a “split” of the orientations to work according to educational level could be discerned. These results were interpreted as a social-psychological correlate of unemployment and discussed in the light of the ongoing social transformations of the so-called Third Industrial Revolution.     

Perspective Canada as a social report

This paper reviews the first attempt at social reporting in Canada, Perspective Canada, contrasting it with social reports from other nations, in particular the United States' publication, Social Indicators, 1973. Some future directions and structure for Perspective Canada are suggested, and the paper concludes with a discussion of the importance of the bold use of model building in the analysis of social indicators data, and the innovative use of graphical methods for social reporting.     

Applied social reporting: A social indicators system for West German Society

This paper presents a ‘system’, i.e. systematic compilation, of about 200 social indicators in 10 areas of life, for the Federal Republic of Germany, 1955–1975. The construction of this indicator system is explained and an abridged version is introduced that can be comprised into one master table. Next, an overall evaluation of welfare development in West Germany is given and four models for a time-sequence interpretation are discussed. Finally, the present effort is put in perspective, e.g. in regard of the OECD program and of recent quality-of-life survey research.     

Quality of Life Predictors and Normative Data

This study identifies predictors and normative data for quality of life (QOL) in a sample of Portuguese adults from general population. A cross-sectional correlational study was undertaken with two hundred and fifty-five (N = 255) individuals from Portuguese general population (mean age 43 years, range 25–84 years; 148 females, 107 males). Participants completed the European Portuguese version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life short-form instrument and the European Portuguese version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Demographic information was also collected. Portuguese adults reported their QOL as good. The physical, psychological and environmental domains predicted 44 % of the variance of QOL. The strongest predictor was the physical domain and the weakest was social relationships. Age, educational level, socioeconomic status and emotional status were significantly correlated with QOL and explained 25 % of the variance of QOL. The strongest predictor of QOL was emotional status followed by education and age. QOL was significantly different according to: marital status; living place (mainland or islands); type of cohabitants; occupation; health. The sample of adults from general Portuguese population reported high levels of QOL. The life domain that better explained QOL was the physical domain. Among other variables, emotional status best predicted QOL. Further variables influenced overall QOL. These findings inform our understanding on adults from Portuguese general population QOL and can be helpful for researchers and practitioners using this assessment tool to compare their results with normative data.     

The contribution of medical measures to the decline of mortality from respiratory tuberculosis: An ageperiod-cohort model

The decline of mortality in the more developed nations has been related to two major influences, economic development and the introduction of medical measures. The contribution of medical measures has been a source of continuing controversy. Most previous studies employ either a birth cohort or calendar year arrangement of mortality data to address this controversy. The present study applies an age-period-cohort model to mortality from respiratory tuberculosis in England and Wales, Italy, and New Zealand in an attempt to separate economic influences from that of medical measures. The results of the analysis indicate that while the overall contribution of medical measures is small when examined by calendar year, specific birth cohorts both in Italy and in England and Wales benefited substantially from these measures. The environmental conditions in New Zealand, however, were such that the introduction of medical measures barely affected declining mortality levels from respiratory tuberculosis.