Motherhood and Graduate Education: 1970–2000

This study examines issues related to the fertility of graduate students over time. First, it examines changes in motherhood rates between 1970 and 2000 among women aged 20–49 who are enrolled in graduate school, both by themselves and relative to prevailing trends among women not enrolled in graduate school, and to other college educated women. Overall, women enrolled in graduate school are increasingly likely to be mothers of young children, and are increasingly similar to non-graduate students. Second, it examines the timing of these births, and finds that almost half of births occur while women are enrolled in graduate school. Third, a brief review of current maternity leave policies and childcare options available to graduate students is presented. Results are discussed in terms of institutional changes within academia, changes between cohorts that attended graduate school in these decades, and the policy needs of graduate student mothers.

Early traces of the Second Demographic Transition in Bulgaria: A joint analysis of marital and non-marital union formation, 1960–2004

We explore trends in first-union formation in Bulgaria from 1960, using data from the national Gender and Generations Survey of 2004. We analyse jointly the transition into cohabitation and directly into marriage. The standardized marriage rate falls dramatically from the early 1980s; the corresponding rate of entry into cohabitation has already increased from the early 1960s but (surprisingly) falls moderately toward the end of our period. Cohabitation also tends to last progressively longer in more recent periods. The analysis shows that a pregnancy leads to a dramatic increase in the rate of both kinds of union formation: the increase is by a factor of almost 20 for marriage formation and about 10 for entry into cohabitation, ceteris paribus. Our findings suggest that, in Bulgaria at least, some manifestations of the Second Demographic Transition can be detected as early as the 1980s.     

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.     

Educational Pairings,Motherhood, and Women’s Relative Earnings in Europe

As a consequence of the reversal of the gender gap in education, the female partner in a couple now typically has as much as or more education compared with the male partner in most Western countries. This study addresses the implications for the earnings of women relative to their male partners in 16 European countries. Using the 2007 and 2011 rounds of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (N = 58,292), we investigate the extent to which international differences in women’s relative earnings can be explained by educational pairings and their interaction with the motherhood penalty on women’s earnings, by international differences in male unemployment, or by cultural gender norms. We find that the newly emerged pattern of hypogamy is associated with higher relative earnings for women in all countries and that the motherhood penalty on relative earnings is considerably lower in hypogamous couples, but neither of these findings can explain away international country differences. Similarly, male unemployment is associated with higher relative earnings for women but cannot explain away the country differences. Against expectations, we find that the hypogamy bonus on women’s relative earnings, if anything, tends to be stronger rather than weaker in countries that exhibit more conservative gender norms.     

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children’s mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children’s actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not. Among children of partnered women, those whose mothers have experienced prior union transitions have a higher mortality risk. Targeting children of mothers who have experienced union instability—regardless of current union status—may augment ongoing efforts to reduce childhood mortality, especially in Africa and Latin America where union transitions are common.     

Changing trends in the Tanzania–China relationship

This paper discusses the mixed perceptions toward the Tanzania–China relationship since the dawn of globalization. The focus among other things is on the increase of foreign direct investment (FDI) flow to Tanzania in general and from China in particular. It aims to show how the political and economic cooperation between two countries has been fairing and how globalization forces are influencing cooperation between Tanzania and China. Among other aspects, it discusses major areas of cooperation and how these areas have been changing over time. Additionally, opportunities and challenges of this cooperation not only in the context of economy, but also socially and culturally are explored and discussed. Information presented in this paper is based on a pilot qualitative study conducted in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s major commercial center. The article concludes that involvement of China in Africa in general causes mixed feelings within and outside Africa. However, observers from outside Africa seem to be more skeptical and concerned than those from within Africa are.     

Identifying the Confounders of Marginalization and Mortality in Mexico, 2003–2007

Social Indicators Research - Confounders alter any predicted outcome by modifying the relationship between cause and consequence. Confounders can appear in different proportions inside a population...     

Family Size,Cognitive Outcomes,and Familial Interaction in Stable,Two-Parent Families: United States, 1997–2002

Measures of children’s time use, particularly with parents and siblings, are used to evaluate three hypotheses in relation to the vocabulary and mathematical skills development: (1) the resource dilution hypothesis, which argues that parental and household resources are diluted in larger families; (2) the confluence hypothesis, which suggests that the intellectual milieu of families is lowered with additional children; and (3) the admixture (“no effect”) hypothesis, which suggests that the negative relationship between family size and achievement is an artifact of cross-sectional research resulting from unobserved heterogeneity. Each hypothesis is tested using within-child estimates of change in cognitive scores over time with the addition of new children to families.     

Comic revisions? Motherhood and women’s comedy in contemporary Germany

Maternal stereotypes and the realities of mothering are prominent themes in Anke Engelke’s Ladykracher and Martina Hill’s Knallerfrauen, two of the most popular sketch shows in twenty-first-century Germany. This article relates their success to social anxieties about motherhood, which Engelke and Hill illuminate through the theme of their sketches as well as through their very use of comedy to do so. I begin by using close-readings of Ladykracher and Knallerfrauen to illuminate the political potential of the sketch form to challenge maternal myths and articulate taboo feelings such as maternal ambivalence. I then consider the innovation of these maternal sketches in view of traditional theories of comedy, which paradoxically draw their imagery from the realm of the maternal even though they discount real women and mothers as comic agents. I argue that the maternal sketches of Engelke and Hill are thus doubly subversive, challenging maternal taboos as well as the discursive and generic norms they sustain.     

The ties that bind? Marriage formation,consanguinity and war in Lebanon and Palestine

Journal of Population Research - The paper explores the link between the civil war (1975–1990) in Lebanon and the first Intifada (1987–1993) in Palestine, and women’s transition...     

Women’s experiences of having had,and recovered from,eclampsia at a tertiary hospital in Tanzania

Background

Eclampsia is a major cause of maternal and perinatal mortality that requires advanced care and long hospital stays with uncertain outcomes for mother and baby. Care of eclamptic women is particularly challenging in low-income settings. Standards for medical care for eclampsia are established but the psychosocial needs of women are under-researched.

Racial and Ethnic Inequality in Poverty and Affluence, 1959–2015

Population Research and Policy Review - This paper examines patterns and trends in racial inequality in poverty and affluence over the 1959–2015 period. Analyzing data from decennial censuses...     

Marital Fertility and its Determinants in Rural and in Urban Spain, 1887–1930

Based primarily on census data between 1887 and 1920, the present article explores the basic structure of the social and economic factors that influenced marital fertility levels during the early part of the fertility transition in Spain. Multiple regression analysis is applied to ecological models based on separate rural and urban data. While some of the conclusions from the Princeton European Fertility Project have been corroborated, a number of the results have been quite noteworthy. Not the least of these are the sharply differing structures of causality in rural and urban areas, and the surprising and consistent role played by literacy as a stimulant of marital fertility. In the discussion of the results, we have insisted on the importance of interpreting different demographic, economic, and cultural indicators within concrete historical contexts.     

Understanding changes in Māori incomes and income inequality 1997–2003

This paper examines recent changes in weekly income levels and dispersion for Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous ethnic group. Changes in the Māori income distribution between 1997 and 2003 reflect rapid increases in economic growth and employment rate. A reduced proportion of people had zero or benefit-level incomes and a higher proportion had high incomes. Income inequality declined for working-aged Māori and was stable for employed Māori. The average income gap between Māori and Europeans declined. The increased Māori employment rate during this period was the single most important driver of changes in the Māori income distribution.

Climate and marriage in the Netherlands, 1871–1937

Environmental factors such as climate variability can place significant constraints on demographic behavior in a range of settings. However, few studies investigate the relationships between demography and climate in historical contexts. Using longitudinal individual-level demographic data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) and climate and economic data from 1871 to 1937, we examine the effects of climate variability on marriage. This analysis reveals that marriage increases with negative environmental conditions such as cold temperatures, riverine flooding, and high rye prices. These findings are not consistent with a Malthusian narrative of marriage behavior or with the expectation that environmental constraints were stronger in the historical past.     

The increase in marital status differences in mortality up to the oldest age in seven European countries, 1990–99

We investigate mortality differentials by marital status among older age groups using a database of mortality rates by marital status at ages 40 and over for seven European countries with 1 billion person-years of exposure. The mortality advantage of married people, both men and women, continues to increase up to at least the age group 85–89, the oldest group we are able to consider. We find the largest absolute differences in mortality levels between marital status groups are at high ages, and that absolute differentials are: (i) greater for men than for women; (ii) similar in magnitude across countries; (iii) increase steadily with age; and (iv) are greatest at older age. We also find that the advantage enjoyed by married people increased over the 1990s in almost all cases. We note that results for groups such as older divorced women need to be interpreted with caution.     

Diversity and change in Cambodian households, 1998–2006

Extant ethnographic studies suggest that the nuclear family has been the predominant living arrangement in Cambodia, and the country’s rapid socioeconomic transformation since the early 1990s may have accentuated that dominance. To examine these claims, we analyse here household structure in Cambodia between 1998 and 2006, based on data from the 1998 Census, two nationally-representative surveys (2000 and 2005), and a continuing demographic surveillance system (from 2000 on). Our analysis confirms the large prevalence of nuclear families, but not an unequivocal trend toward their increasing prevalence. First, nuclear families are less prevalent in urban than in rural areas, and nationwide, they appear to have receded slightly between 2000 and 2005. We find that increases in the prevalence of extended households correspond to periods of faster economic growth, and interpret these contrasted trends as signs of tensions during this transitional period in Cambodia. While the nuclear family may still be the cultural norm, a high degree of pragmatism is also evident in the acceptance of other living arrangements, albeit temporary, as required by economic opportunities and housing shortage in urban areas.     

Armed Conflict and Fertility in Colombia, 2000–2010

Population Research and Policy Review - This paper looks at the association between the Colombian Armed Internal Conflict (AIC) and fertility for women in the first decade of the 21st century when...