Attitudes toward abortion among catholic Mexican-American women: The effects of religiosity and education

Contrary to observed trends in religious fertility and contraceptive use differentials, Catholic/non-Catholic differentials in attitudes toward abortion have not been converging. This study suggests that this may be due to an interaction between religiosity and education. In a sample of Catholic Mexican-American women in Los Angeles County, the authors found that among respondents brought up in Mexico, education had a liberalizing effect on their attitudes. With the exception of the most devout, the same trend was observed among U.S.-reared respondents. Among the most religious group, however, education had the opposite effect, suggesting that convergence will be delayed.     

The prediction of fertility among catholics: A longitudinal analysis

A longitudinal analysis of the reproductive behavior of a sample of Catholics who were participants in the 1965 NFS and reinterviewed in 1969 is reported in this paper. Fertility over the period studied varied systematically with the additional number of children intended in 1965. In addition, this study has documented a predictive role for method of contraception and the experience of premarital pregnancy. Women using less effective methods and those premaritally pregnant had higher fertility over the interval net of controls for other variables in the analysis, including life-cycle stage and 1965 intentions. Surprisingly, the planning status of the last pregnancy before 1965 was not found to have any independent association with subsequent fertility.     

The effects of temperature on human fertility

Monthly birth and temperature data for a variety of states and countries are used to estimate the effect of short-run temperature fluctuations on fertility. Regressions of monthly births on a flexible specification of lagged monthly temperature show that temperature has quantitatively important effects on both seasonal and nonseasonal variation in births. Summer temperature extremes reduce conceptions in the southern United States, explaining a substantial part of the observed seasonal birth pattern. Extreme cold shows no evidence of affecting conceptions. The results also show significant seasonality in births even after accounting for temperature. Controls for monthly temperature do not explain the persistent spring peak in births in northern Europe. This finding suggests that other factors play an important role.     

The effects of gender control on fertility and children's consumption

Effects of sex preference on investments in children‘s human capital, bequests and fertility are studied, with and without sex selection, in a model based on parental altruism. Both pure sex preference, a feature of the parental utility function, and indirect preference, which arises from gender-related differences in earnings opportunities, are examined. When there is no gender control the impact of pure sex preference is seen in smaller consumption for daughters than for sons. However, when gender control is exerted, sex preference raises the sex ratio and it is possible that sisters may, on average, consume no less than their more numerous brothers. In an example of the model with specific functional forms, parents who practise gender control have larger families than if sex selection techniques were unavailable. The effect is magnified if sons‘ earnings opportunities are better than daughters‘. JEL classification: D11, J13, J16 Received August 31, 1995 / Accepted May 2, 1996     

The effects of teenage fertility on young adult childbearing

Numerous studies of fertility behavior find that an early age at first birth increases the rate of subsequent childbearing. Typically, however, these studies do not account for the possibility of serial correlation in the unobserved determinants of fertility. Using 1979–1992 individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this paper employs the Method of Simulated Moments to estimate panel probit models of annual birth outcomes. The panel probit models account for several alternative sources of serial correlation. Estimation reveals that once serial correlation is taken into account, the subsequent fertility effects of early childbearing are either statistically eliminated or reversed. JEL classification: J13 Received March 3, 1995 / Accepted February 23, 1996     

Marriage patterns and fertility of the world population]

Marriage patterns of the world population may be divided into two major categories; i.e., the traditional marriage pattern, and the European marriage pattern. Characteristics of the traditional marriage pattern are: early marriage, a high percentage of married people, and a low percentage of people who remain single during their lifetime. Characteristics of the European marriage pattern include: late marriage and a higher percentage of females who do not marry in their lifetime. In most parts of Asia and Africa and some Latin American countries, the traditional marriage pattern is dominant, and the birth rate in these countries has remained very high. Most countries in Europe show the characteristics of the European marriage pattern, and the fertility rate in these countries is comparatively low. Some other countries, such as Sri Lanka, are in a process of transformation in their marriage pattern, and their fertility level also shows a transition from a high fertility rate to a lower fertility rate. There is a close relationship between marriage patterns and the level of fertility.     

The differential effects of husbands' and wives' statuses on marital fertility

As an extension of prior subjectively-oriented studies that predicted couples' fertility decisions or outcomes by the expected costs and benefits of childbearing to husbands and wives, this article examines the differentiated effects of husbands' and wives' objective statuses on marital fertility, using the cumulative 1972–1990 GSS data. An interesting finding is that wives' education has a significant, negative effect on fertility while the effect of husbands' education is positive and statistically insignificant. This suggests that the generalization of the negative effect of education on fertility may be misleading if one fails to make a distinction between marital partners. Meanwhile, this study finds no significant differences in the effects of husbands' and wives' occupational and work statuses on fertility. By and large, the husbands' status variables add little information to the models explaining fertility. It is also found that the effects of husbands' and wives' statuses are contingent upon their relative education.     

Family limitation and the fertility transition: Evidence from the age patterns of fertility in Europe and Asia

Summary The age patterns of marital fertility levels and decline in modern Asia and historical Europe are analysed in order to answer two questions: (1) How closely do the age patterns of marital fertility in both areas prior to a systematic fertility decline conform to the age pattern of natural fertility? (2) How similar are the age patterns of the fertility transition experienced in Europe in the past, and the age pattern of fertility decline now under way in a number of Asian populations? The answers have important implications for our understanding of the fertility transition. They suggest that modern family limitation (i.e. parity-specific fertility control) was largely absent prior to a secular decline in marital fertility in both Europe and Asia. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that once the practice of family limitation starts to spread among the broader strata of the population, it seems almost inevitably to increase until it becomes a common behavioural norm. In this respect, the modern fertility transition appears to result from the spread of innovative behaviour and cannot be viewed simply as an adjustment to new socio-economic circumstances based on previously established behavioural mechanisms.     

The effects of family caps on the subsequent fertility decisions of never-married mothers

Family caps seek to reduce fertility among welfare recipients by denying additional cash assistance to recipients who have children while on welfare. A necessary condition for family caps to be an effective policy tool is that welfare recipients respond to financial incentives in making decisions that affect subsequent fertility outcomes. This paper uses data from the 2001 and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine whether welfare mothers respond to the incentive provided by the Aid to Families with Dependent Children/Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (AFDC/TANF) system in determining whether or not to have a second child. The results show no evidence that family caps have an effect on the subsequent childbearing of never married women.

Religion and fertility in the United States: New patterns

In the United States, the baby boom-era pattern of high Catholic and low Protestant fertility has ended. Among non-Hispanic whites in the 1980s, Catholic total fertility rates (TFRs) were about one-quarter of a child lower than Protestant rates (1.64 vs. 1.91). Most of the Protestant-Catholic difference is related to later and less frequent marriage among Catholics. Future research on the demography of religious groups should focus on explaining the delayed marriage pattern of Catholics, the high fertility of Mormons and frequently attending Protestants, and the very low fertility of those with no religious affiliation.     

Timing effects and the interpretation of period fertility

Low fertility levels and later childbearing in many developed countries have reinvigorated the debate between period and cohort perspectives on fertility and on the meaningfulness of the period total fertility rate (TFR). Here, fertility-timing effects are defined as level changes in period fertility that do not reflect level changes in the completed fertility of cohorts. That definition leads to the average cohort fertility (ACF) as a measure of period fertility adjusted for timing effects. In an influential paper, Bongaarts and Feeney (1998) presented an alternative approach and a different measure, TFR*, to adjust for timing effects. Here, the two measures are compared. In the context of model populations, the ACF performs well, reflecting an average of the fertility of the active cohorts. The Bongaarts-Feeney TFR*, however, is frequently unreliable and can be erratic when there are cycles in period timing. When applied to twentieth-century U.S. experience, the TFR* behaves like a period measure and yields adjustments that are often wide of the mark. The ACF shows the stability associated with cohort measures and quantifies the substantial impact that timing effects had during the "birth dearth" of the 1970s. The period TFR reached a low of 1.74 in 1976, but the ACF never went below 2.06 during the 1970s.     

Some effects of spouse separation on fertility

Simple probability models incorporating an approximation first demonstrated by Menken (1979) are used to study births averted by two classes of temporary spouse separation, single and cyclic, under conditions of natural fertility. For either class of spouse separation, births averted increases disproportionately with longer separation. For a given length of separation, births prevented are more sensitive to change in length of anovulation than to change in level ofnatural fecundability or risk of spontaneous abortion. In addition, by means of the macrosimulation model REPMOD (Bongaarts, 1977), it is shown that the fertility impact of temporary spouse separation tends to decrease as couples age.     

Religion and fertility in the United States: The importance of marriage patterns and hispanic origin

The marital fertility of white Catholic wives in the United States was higher than that of non-Catholic wives in 1977–1981, but when Hispanics were excluded, the differential disappeared; therefore, the Catholic-non-Catholic differential in recent years was due entirely to the higher fertility of Hispanic Catholics. The Total Fertility Rates (TFR) of Catholics were slightly lower in 1977–1981 than those for white Protestants, primarily because Catholic women tend to marry later than Protestant women. This finding was confirmed by multivariate analysis of data on children ever born. We examine some additional data and various theories to speculate on whether these patterns will last.     

The politics of counter-rejection: gay christians and the church

This paper analyzes the accounts constructed by 60 gay male Christians in managing the stigma imposed on them by the Church. These accounts signify that they, having developed a positive self-image, are involved in the politics of counter-rejection of the Church and its official positions on the issue of homosexuality. Their counter-rejection of the Church as a moral arbiter is predicated on four bases: (1) the Church's ignorance of sex and sexuality, (2) the Church's ignorance of all sexualities as God's creation, (3) the Church's misinterpretation of biblical passages on homosexuality, and (4) the Church's fallibility. Having counter-rejected the Church by challenging its credibility, the counter-rejection of the Church's official positions is a matter of course. Their experiences highlight the ability of stigmatized social actors to invent social biographies not only to defend their moral choices, but also to challenge the credibility of sources that question and stigmatize their choices.     

Demographic transitions: analyzing the effects of mortality on fertility

The effect of mortality reductions on fertility is one of the main mechanisms stressed by the recent growth literature in order to explain demographic transitions. We analyze the empirical relevance of this mechanism based on the experience of developed and developing countries since 1960. We distinguish between the effects on gross and net fertility, take into account the dynamic nature of the relationship, and control for alternative explanatory factors and for endogeneity. Our results show that mortality plays a large role in fertility reductions, that the change in fertility behavior comes with a lag of about 10 years and that both net and gross fertility are affected. We find comparatively little support for explanations of the demographic transition based on changes in GDP per capita.     

A comparison of the size of families of roman catholics and non-catholics in Great Britain

Abstract In a recent study of family size ideals in the D.S.A. it was found that in the 1960'S the mean ideal family size of Catholics was about half a child higher than the mean ideal size of non-Catholics. This note describes an analysis of similar data for married women in Great Britain, derived from an investigation undertaken in 1966 for the Population Investigation Committee. A difference in ideal family size, which was of the same order as the American difference, was found; and, in addition, the actual fertility of Catholics was compared with that of others.