Contraceptive sterilization in the U. S.: 1965 and 1970

There was an impressive increase between 1965 and 1970 in the prevalence of contraceptive sterilization, an increase that accelerated in the later years of the period and was shared in by virtually all subgroups considered. Among couples in 1970 for whom sterilization had been an option (recognizing that it is a terminal method), about one of every five had chosen this method of contraception. About half of all sterilizations were vasectomies, though vasectomies have outnumbered tubal ligations in recent years. Differentials in prevalence and in increases during 1965–1970 are reported for a number of life-cycle and social variables. In addition, a profile of the contraceptive sterile is presented for recent sterilizations. Significant proportions are relatively young and of low parity at the time of sterilization. In the context of the continued diffusion of the pill and IUD and increases in legal abortion, the net demographic effect of increasing sterilization is regarded as low, though sterilization is an important component of an effective fertility control regime.     

Factors related to the intention to have additional children in the United States: A reanalysis of data from the 1965 and 1970 national fertility studies

Reproductive intentions of white mothers with no more than three children in 1965 and in 1970 were analyzed for their stability and change with respect to such factors as parity, age of the youngest child, wife’s employment, and husband’s education. Parity and age of the youngest child were found to have a much more important effect on the intent to have additional children than were such socioeconomic variables as wife’s employment and husband’s education. Parity and the interval since the latest birth (or the age of the youngest child) were found to have a nonlinear effect and to interact in affecting the reproductive intention. This suggests a convergence to a twochild family as the threshold size and that the length of childspacing is contingent on the parity. Change during 1965–1970 in this direction was found to be greater among mothers with husbands having college or higher educations.     

Changes in fertility expectations and preferences between 1962 and 1977: Their relation to final parity

Changing fertility expectations and preferences from 1962 to 1977 are compared with final parity in a longitudinal study. Results are strongly affected by initial parity in 1962. Final parity, 27 percent below expectations for those initially childless, illustrates the effect for couples free to change expectations downward of declining fertility preferences. Changes in expectations early in marriage had a significant long-term effect on final parity, as did early differences between wife’s expectations and husband’s preferences. Unplanned births increased final parity significantly. Religion, education, and income had no systematic relation to the discrepancy between initial expectations and final parity.     

Female sterilizing operations in New South Wales: A demographic perspective

This paper examines trends in female sterilizing operations from a demographic perspective. These operations have declined in New South Wales since 1981, with a substantial drop in tubal ligation and hysterectomy, particularly among younger women. The decline in sterilization of women of childbearing age has been due to postponement of births. Younger women have avoided terminal methods of birth control and continued to use methods, such as oral contraceptives and back-up abortion, which allow for a pregnancy at a later age. Sterilizing operations still remain the most commonly reported means of birth control by women over age 35.     

Couples’ time together: complementarities in production versus complementarities in consumption

Economists have previously suggested that gains from marriage can be generated by complementarities in production (gains from specialization and exchange) or by complementarities in consumption (gains from joint consumption of household public goods and joint time consumption). This paper uses the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2003 to 2011 to test whether couples that engage in less specialization (are more similar in hours of market work) spend more time together. We find that among married couples without young children, those with a greater difference in weekly hours of work between husband and wife spend less time together on non-working weekend days. Importantly, we find that this relationship is quite symmetric between couples in which the husband works greater hours and couples in which the wife works greater hours. We do not find evidence of a relationship between specialization and couple time together among couples with young children.     

Partners’ Educational Pairings and Fertility Across Europe

We provide new evidence on the education-fertility relationship by using EU-SILC panel data on 24 European countries to investigate how couples’ educational pairings predict their childbearing behavior. We focus on differences in first-, second-, and third-birth rates among couples with varying combinations of partners’ education. Our results show important differences in how education relates to parity progressions depending on the education of the partner. First, highly educated homogamous couples show a distinct childbearing behavior in most country clusters. They tend to postpone the first birth most and display the highest second- and third-birth rates. Second, contrary to what may be expected based on the “new home economics” approach, hypergamous couples with a highly educated male and a lower-educated female partner display among the lowest second-birth transitions. Our findings underscore the relevance of interacting both partners’ education for a better understanding of the education-fertility relationship.     

Family planning in choiseul province,Solomon Islands

The results presented are from a rural prevalence survey on family planning in Choiseul Province, Solomon Islands. Married women aged 15–49 years with at least one living child and married men whose wife met the same criteria, provided data on knowledge, attitudes and practices of contraceptive use. Fifty one per cent of the female sample were using some form of contraception, 26 per cent reversible and 25 per cent non-reversible methods. Sixty-five per cent of men claimed that they or their spouse were using a method of family planning. Tubal ligation was the most common currently used method (25 per cent in the female survey). Desired family size was four for both males and females. Knowledge and approval of family planning was high, with 83 per cent of females and 81 per cent of males knowing of at least one method. Problems in accessing information and services for family planning include cultural and logistical constraints. Religious affiliation was the major variable affecting knowledge, use and approval of contraceptive methods. Nearly a quarter of the sample lived further than two hours travel time from the nearest health clinic supplying contraceptive methods. These clinics often have only an intermittent availability of supplies. A strong interest in family planning was demonstrated by both respondents and service providers.     

Age at marriage as a variable in socio-economic differentials in fertility

Earlier studies have pointed out that socio-economic differentials in fertility depend upon both religion and farm background. These studies report a negative relation between fertility and socio-economic status for non-Catholic American couples in contrast to a positive relation for Catholics. Likewise, a negative differential for American couples with farm background has been observed in contrast to no differential for twogeneration urbanites. Age at marriage is a third such interaction variable: the strong negative socio-economic differential observed when wife’s age at marriage is under 19 diminishes with advancing age at marriage and becomes positive for wives who married at age 23 or older. Moreover, for both non-Catholics and Catholics, couples with and without farm background, the differential by wife’s education is negative when wife’s age at marriage is young, positive when her age at marriage is old. Both sociological factors (the incidence of non-familial adult roles) and differential fecundity appear to underlie the interaction. The analysis is based on reports of once-married, white, nonfarm wives aged 30 to 39 included in the 1955 or 1960 Growth of American Families Studies or the 1965 National Fertility Study (approximately 1,000 in each survey).     

The island-wide family planning programme in Taiwan: Analysis of the accomplishments of the past eight years

Abstract Taiwan's island-wide family planning programme is the showcase of similar programmes in the developing world. In the past eight years, between 1964 and 1971, a cumulative total of 935,000 married women accepted the Lippes loop, 236,000 accepted the pill, and 116,000 couples accepted condoms. The prevalence rates of loop and pill users at the end of 1971 are estimated at 18·7 per cent and 3-6 per cent respectively. The programme had been recruiting more younger women of lower parity to practise family planning which is desirable, but a fact of concern is that a large proportion of the acceptors had had at least one son, and had accepted the methods to stop, rather than to space births. The 'life expectancy' of loop and pill, the two major contraceptives recommended in the programme, have been shorter than expected, 31·4 months without and 49·9 months with re-insertion for the loop, and only 10·5 months without re-taking for the pill. The concepts of 'half-life (retention)' and 'half-life (impact)', developed by the author, were applied in the analysis to obtain the values of 18·6 months and 25·7 months respectively for the loop, and 5·8 months and 9·2 months respectively for the pill all for the first segment. Only nine per cent of the total current loop wearers were aged 40-44 in 1964, but the proportion had increased substantially, to 20·5 per cent, in 1971. This 'ageing' of current users tends to minimize the demographic impact of the programme which is a factor of concern. Methods to overcome this and other problems should be explored for the final success of the programme.     

The relationship of family planning to savings and consumption in Taiwan

This study relates fertility behavior to modern economic behavior, namely, saving and consumption of modern durables, for a sample of couples in Taiwan. It uses only couples who say they want no more children, and these couples are further classified by current use of contraception and by whether or not they already had excess fertility. Couples who are successful fertility planners, i.e., those who have no unwanted children and are current users of contraception, are distinctive with regard to modern economic behavior as compared to couples who do not use contraception or have excess fertility. Successful planners are more likely to save and to have more modern durables; these differentials remain when adjustments are made for the effects of family income, wife’s age, wife’s education, and duration of marriage. It seems that the kind of planning behavior which enables a couple to successfully plan their family size also enables them to manage their economic affairs so that they can save and enjoy more modern consumption goods.     

The evolution of family planning in an African city: Ibadan, Nigeria

Summary Data drawn from a 1973 probability sample of 6,606 Yoruba females, 15-59 years of age in Ibadan City, Nigeria, are employed to analyse changing family planning practice over time. Usage and method rates are calculated for broad age groups from 1930 to 1973. Contraceptive practice is shown to have increased rapidly during the 1960s and early 1970s, from a very low initial base with a doubling period for the proportion of contraceptors of about four years, so that by 1973 one-sixth of the women had practised contraception and one-ninth were currently doing so. The major determinant of contraceptive practice is education. Oral contraceptives and IUDs account for an ever larger proportion of all contraception over time and together made up over 50 per cent by 1973. The Ibadan data give strong support to a suggestion emanating from scattered findings elsewhere that there is a special pattern of sub-Saharan contraceptive use: it begins with use in pre-marital and extra-marital relationships; then is increasingly employed as a substitute for post-marital sexual abstinence, and only later becomes the means for limiting the size of the family. Hence, the success of a family planning programme is indicated by rising average parity among the acceptors. Most couples in Ibadan will probably be practising contraception at some time in the 1980s, but even then such rates will probably still be low in rural areas.     

‘Maternity migration’ and the increased sex ratio at birth in Hong Kong SAR

The sex ratio at birth (SRB) in Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) has recently increased dramatically. Using a data set (N = 850,331) of all recorded births in Hong Kong between 1995 and 2009, we calculated SRBs by parity and immigrant status. The findings indicate a strong son preference among Mainland Chinese who have travelled to Hong Kong to give birth, especially at parity two or above. Logistic regression models show that this tendency is significantly greater among more affluent couples and remains strong even among Mainland Chinese women resident in Hong Kong for any length of time. The SRB of Hong Kong-born couples, though elevated at higher parities, is less skewed. Hong Kong has been serving as an outlet for ‘elite’ Mainland couples to circumvent family planning restrictions. The analysis also suggests the advantages of a wider set of immigrant variables over a binary construct.     

Extended family households among children in the United States: Differences by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status

This study uses nationally representative longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to examine the prevalence and predictors of extended family households among children in the United States and to explore variation by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (SES). Findings suggest that extended family households are a common living arrangement for children, with 35?per cent of youth experiencing this family structure before age 18. Racial/ethnic and SES differences are substantial: 57?per cent of Black and 35?per cent of Hispanic children ever live in an extended family, compared with 20?per cent of White children. Further, 47?per cent of children whose parents did not finish high school spend time in an extended family, relative to 17?per cent of children whose parents earned a bachelor's degree or higher. Models of predictors show that transitions into extended families are largely a response to social and economic needs.     

Do Health Insurance and Residence Pattern the Likelihood of Tubal Sterilization among American Women?

American women have increasingly opted for tubal sterilization or tubal ligation surgery in recent decades. While research has begun to examine the unequal access to health care in the United States, little research has considered how this may impact whether women opt for a tubal ligation surgery. We first profile women with and without tubal ligations using bivariate analysis of the most recent data available, a nationally representative sample of 7,643 women from the National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle 6 (NSFG, Public use data file, 2002). We then use logistic regression models to examine the relationship between having tubal ligation and two focal variables: (1) type of health insurance (Medicaid compared with private, government or military, and no health insurance), and (2) rural or urban place of residence. We find that women on Medicaid are nearly twice as likely to have had a tubal sterilization compared with women who have private health insurance coverage. Also, women on Medicaid are substantially more likely to have a tubal sterilization than women with government or military insurance and women with no health insurance (26% and 36%, respectively). Further, we find that women living in rural areas are nearly twice as likely to have a tubal sterilization, compared with women in urban or suburban areas, all else being equal.     

Which couples at given parities expect to have additional births? An exercise in discriminant analysis

Do couples at given parities who expect to have additional births differ on selected characteristics from their counterparts who do not expect to have any more children? This question is examined herein focusing attention on the wife’s age, age at marriage, religion, and education and the husband’s education and income. The method used is the discriminant-function analysis. The data are from the 1965 U. S. National Fertility Study. The combined discriminatory power of the social and economic background characteristics examined herein has been found to be greater at higher parities than at lower ones, while the opposite is true of demographic characteristics.     

初婚夫妇年龄差的特点、变动趋势及分析——以北京为例

利用北京市2004～2009年的婚姻登记数据,对近年来初婚夫妇年龄差的特点和变动趋势进行考察,并探讨其影响因素。研究发现,近年来北京市初婚夫妇的平均年龄差为1.87岁,"男大女小"仍是主流的婚龄匹配模式,但由于"妻大于夫"的夫妇数量的增多和大年龄差距的"夫大于妻"的情况的减少,夫妇年龄差呈逐渐缩小的态势。女性初婚年龄的推迟、女性教育文化水平的不断提升及其与男性学历差距的缩小、城市化进程的不断推进等,均使夫妇年龄差趋于缩小。这些发现有助于我们了解当前大城市的婚配状况和发展态势,并为进一步的深入研究提供依据。     

Expectations of additional children by race,parity, and selected socio-economic characteristics,United States: 1967

This is a study of fertility expectations of wives in relation to selected demographic and social and economic characteristics. The data for this study were obtained from a special survey conducted in 1967 from a probability sample of 30,000 households. The analyzed data show that the number of children expected in the next five years is inversely related to parity. Because of the inverse relationship, the expectations of additional children tend to be inversely related to age at marriage of wife, number of years married, and similar temporal variables. The data show also that there exists an inverse relationship between expectations of additional children and selected socio-economic characteristics, such as education of wife, occupation, and income of husband.     

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.     

The joint effects of marriage partners’ socioeconomic positions on the risk of divorce

This study investigated the joint effects of spouses' socioeconomic positions on the risk of divorce in Finland. For couples in which both partners were at the lowest educational level, the risk of divorce was lower than could be expected on the basis of the previously documented overall inverse association between each spouse's education and the risk of divorce. Women who were employed or were homemakers, and who had employed husbands, had comparatively stable marriages; couples in which the husband, the wife, or both partners were unemployed had an elevated risk of divorce. A husband's high income decreased the risk of divorce, and a wife's high income increased the risk at all levels of the other spouse's income, but especially when the wife's income exceeded the husband's.     

CharacteriStics and utilization of midwives in a selected rural area of East Pakistan

The purpose of this study was to obtain information about the utilization of midwives (dais) by village women and to learn more about the characteristics and practices of those dais. Two interview schedules were prepared. The first was used to interview 632 village women to determine who performed or assisted with their last two deliveries. The second was used to obtain information from 21 dais.The results of the first phase may be summarized as follows: (a) 38 per cent of the women were delivered by relatives; (b) 33 per cent of the women delivered their own children; (c) 14 per cent were delivered by neighbors; (d) 6 per cent were delivered by dais; (e) 2 percent were delivered in hospitals; and (f) the remaining 7 per cent were accounted for by several minor categories.The results of the interviews with dais are summarized as follows: (a) they are mainly widows and older women; (b) they have no formal training; (c) they work for friends, neighbors, and relatives and receive a sari as compensation; (d) they cannot handle complicated deliveries; (e) they deliver 3-4 children a year; (f) their sterilizing procedures depend upon soap, water, and folk beliefs; (g) most think midwifery is a worthwhile service; (h) about one-half have a general understanding of the reproduction process; (i) most do not know how to prevent conception; and (j) about half think that it is a good idea to participate actively in a family planning program.