Land use and first birth timing in an agricultural setting

The dramatic changes in the earth’s landscape have prompted increased interest in the links between population, land use, and land cover. Previous research emphasized the notion of population pressure (population pressure increases demands on natural resources causing changes in land use), overlooking the potentially important effects of changes in land use on humans. Using multiple data sets from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal, we test competing hypotheses about the impact of land use on first birth timing. We argue that while agricultural land should encourage early childbearing, land area devoted to public infrastructure should discourage it. The results show that individuals from neighborhoods with larger proportions of land under agriculture experienced first birth at rates higher than those from neighborhoods with smaller proportions. On the other hand, individuals from neighborhoods with larger proportions of land under public infrastructure experienced first birth at rates lower than those from neighborhoods with smaller proportions. However, the effects of public infrastructure are not as strong as the land area devoted to agriculture.

Preliminary discussion on the current over-population in agriculture in China]

The population devoted to agriculture constitutes more than 80% of China's total population. This high percentage is not very common in today's world. In the last 30 years, the population devoted to agriculture has increased by 81.9%, but the area of arable land has decreased in the same period of time. This situation has created problems, such as a surplus of agricultural labor, an imbalance between the agricultural population growth and agricultural means of production, a serious contradiction between the agricultural population growth and mechanization of agriculture, an imbalance between the agricultural population growth and means of livelihood, and the current low standard of living for populations engaged in agricultural work. In order to solve the problems of overpopulation, various measures must be taken in different places. The economic structure of agriculture is to be reasonably arranged, and various operations in agriculture are to be carried out. In addition to the production of main agricultural crops, forestry, animal husbandry, the fishing industry, and family supplementary income are to be developed in order to provide more job opportunities. Communes and production teams should emphasize labor intensive plans for more profit with less investment. Agriculture should focus on intensive farming in order to increase productivity. Arable land can be expanded with reclamation projects, and water and soil conservation is necessary. The surplus agricultural population should be utilized for productive activities.     

Neighbors and neighborhoods: effects on marriage timing

Studies of neighborhoods can benefit from data and theoretical frameworks that allow them to examine the differences between neighborhoods and neighbors. Without this distinction, it is unclear if it is characteristics of the people or the place that are associated with individual outcomes. Using data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study, I explore the differences between neighbors and neighborhoods and their associations with marriage timing. I hypothesize three mechanisms whereby neighbors influence individuals: information sharing, social modeling, and sanctions and rewards among a close primary residential group. I explore three domains in which these mechanisms are likely to operate: education, media consumption, and attitudes. Results indicate that when neighbors have attitudes favoring later marriage and being single, marriage rates decrease, even when controlling for measures that describe the neighborhood’s access to important resources in the form of institutions and services.     

Family organization and fertility limitation in Nepal

This paper uses the family mode of organization framework to link together hypotheses relating social change to fertility limitation. Experiences in nonfamily activities are predicted to affect fertility behavior, with the outcome depending on the social, economic, and cultural context. To provide individual-level tests of hypotheses, the paper uses data from a Nepalese community which recently began dramatic family and fertility transitions. The findings show that experiences in nonfamily activities before marriage increase the odds of subsequently adopting fertility limitation in this setting. The evidence also demonstrates the importance of including measures of husbands' experiences in models of fertility decisions.     

Ivies, extracurriculars, and exclusion: Elite employers’ use of educational credentials

Although a robust literature has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic and social rewards remain less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the returns to formal schooling yet little is known about how employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational credentials. In this article, I analyze how elite professional service employers use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Contrary to common sociological measures of institutional prestige, employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top four) rather than selective university affiliation. They restricted competition to students with elite affiliations and attributed superior abilities to candidates who had been admitted to super-elite institutions, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, a super-elite university affiliation was insufficient on its own. Importing the logic of university admissions, firms performed a strong secondary screen on candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments, favoring high status, resource-intensive activities that resonated with white, upper-middle class culture. I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of educational credentialism to suggest that (a) extracurricular activities have become credentials of social and moral character that have monetary conversion value in labor markets and (b) the way employers use and interpret educational credentials contributes to a social closure of elite jobs based on socio-economic status.     

The Impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit on Marriage and Divorce: Evidence from Flow Data

While considerable research focuses on the anti-poverty and labor supply effects of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), relatively little is known about the program’s influence on marriage and divorce decisions. Furthermore, nearly all work in this area uses stock measures of marital status derived from survey data. In this paper, I draw upon Vital Statistics data between 1977 and 2004 to construct a transition-based measure of marriage and divorce rates. Flows into and out of marriage are advantageous because they are more likely to capture the immediate impact of policy changes. Controlling for state-level characteristics and sources of unobserved heterogeneity, I find that increases in the EITC are associated with reductions in new marriages, although the estimated effect is economically small. I find no relationship between the EITC and new divorces. These results are robust to alternative estimation strategies, data restrictions, and the inclusion of additional policy and demographic controls.     

Parenthood and Leaving Home in Young Adulthood

With increases in nonmarital fertility, the sequencing of transitions in early adulthood has become even more complex. Once the primary transition out of the parental home, marriage was first replaced by nonfamily living and cohabitation; more recently, many young adults have become parents before entering a coresidential union. Studies of leaving home, however, have not examined the role of early parenthood. Using the Young Adult Study of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (n = 4,674), we use logistic regression to analyze parenthood both as a correlate of leaving home and as a route from the home. We find that even in mid-adolescence, becoming a parent is linked with leaving home. Coming from a more affluent family is linked with leaving home via routes that do not involve children rather than those that do, and having a warm relationship with either a mother or a father retards leaving home, particularly to nonfamily living, but is not related to parental routes out of the home.     

Educational attainment and the transition to first marriage among Japanese women

I use data from a large nationally representative survey to examine the relationship between women's educational attainment and the timing of first marriage in Japan. The results indicate that later marriage for highly educated women primarily reflects longer enrollment in school, that university education is increasingly associated with later and less marriage, and that the trend toward later and less marriage is occurring at all levels of educational attainment. These findings are consistent, albeit weakly, with the argument that higher education should be negatively associated with marriage only in countries in which gender relations make it particularly difficult for women to balance work and family.     

The Impact of Community Context on Land Use in an Agricultural Society

As an initial step toward new models of the population-environment relationship, this paper explores the relationship between community context and local land use in an agricultural setting. In this type of setting, we argue that aspects of the community context, such as schools and transportation infrastructure, impact important environmental characteristics, such as land use. We provide hypotheses which explain the mechanisms producing these effects. We then use data from a study of 132 communities in rural Nepal to test our hypotheses. These analyses show that community characteristics are strongly associated with land use in this agricultural setting. The results point toward changes in communities as critical determinants of environmental quality. These findings are consistent with the notion that changes in community contexts may also condition the population-environment relationship.     

Welfare Exit,Marriage, and Welfare Recidivism: A Reevaluation of Patterns of the 1980s and 1990s

We examine the relationship between marriage and welfare recidivism for women leaving a first welfare spell, using the 1979–2000 panels of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Previous studies have found that women who marry around the time of welfare exit have lower rates of welfare return than women who stay single. However, more marriages occur before or after welfare exit than occur at the time of welfare exit. We find that marriages that precede or follow welfare exit by more than 12 months are not associated with significantly lower rates of welfare return. We also confirm previous findings that marriages formed within a year of welfare exit are associated with reduced rates of welfare return. However, these reduced rates mostly indicate later welfare returns rather than fewer welfare returns. Overall, our findings indicate a much weaker association between marriage and welfare independence than has been previously reported for this time period.     

A portrait of the nest-leaving process in early adulthood

This paper provides an in-depth portrait of the nest-leaving process in early adulthood as it emerged in the 1980s. Event histories are used to describe transitions in and out of the parental home during the years from age 15 through age 23. We focus on the role of the “new” forms of living arrangements in the leaving-home process, namely nonfamily living and cohabitation. The results show that the transition to full residential independence is more gradual, with more intermediate steps, than previous studies suggested. Cohabitation is rare as a route out of the parental home, and both nonfamily living and cohabitation lead to much higher return rates than does marriage.     

The demographic context of recent change in the structure of American households

This article examines recent changes in the structure of American households within the context of broad population changes. Decreases in married-couple households and increases in single-parent households are almost entirely due to the changing patterns of marriage, divorce, fertility, and child custody; headship rates for families have remained relatively stable. Increases in single-person and other nonfamily households are due to increases in the size of the unmarried, childless population and to the aging of this population. Increasing propensities to live alone or with nonrelatives were observed between 1970 and 1980, but these behavioral changes have abated during the early 1980s.     

Urban influences on farmland use in New York State

This article assesses the relationship between demographic change and structural adjustments in agriculture. A number of demographic and economic analyses have posited an inverse relationship between post-1950 exurban population growth and agricultural viability, especially in the Northeast Region of the USA. To test this hypothesis, a multivariate model of percent change in county land in farms over the period 1950–1987 is estimated, and the findings only partially support the population hypothesis. Estimation results indicate that the effect of core metropolitan status is significant, but that the effects of rural population change, rural nonfarm population change, and county population deconcentration are not. The analysis demonstrates that maintenance of land in farm use largely depends upon economic forces that are national and regional in scope, and almost exclusively outside the purview of state and local farmland protection programs.     

Race,military service,and marital timing: Evidence from the NLSY-79

I use data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth to examine the relationship between military service and marital timing for white men and black men during the 1980s. I use information about active-duty and reserve-duty service as well as veteran status to implement strong controls for selectivity. I find that active-duty military service increases the probability of first marriage for both whites and blacks. In part, this relationship is due to positive selectivity into the military and, for whites, to greater income and economic stability. Above and beyond the effects of selectivity, income, and economic stability, the effect of active-duty military service is particularly strong for black men.     

Population and pavement: population growth and land development in Israel

This research examines land use change in Israel––an intriguing but understudied setting with regard to population–environment dynamics. While Israel is fairly unique with regard to its combined high levels of economic prosperity and high population growth, this case study has relevance for developed countries and regions (like the south and southwest regions of the USA) which must balance population growth and urban development with open space conservation for ecosystem services and biological diversity. The population–land development relationship is investigated during the period from 1961 to 1995 at three spatial scales: national, regional (six districts), and local (40 localities). There is a positive correlation between population growth and land development rates at the national scale, and while remaining positive, the strength of the relationship varies greatly at regional and local scales. The variation in population–land use dynamics across scales is used to garner insight as to the importance of geography, policy and historical settlement patterns.     

Marriage selection and age patterns of mortality: a mathematical investigation

"In this paper, we use simulation models to demonstrate the complexity of the relationship between the marriage selection process and the resulting RMRs [relative mortality ratios]. In particular, we show that marriage selection alone can produce a relative mortality ratio which remains large and relatively constant at ages far beyond the marriage span....Our general objective...is to determine the range of age patterns of relative mortality which could, in theory, result from marriage selection on the basis of health characteristics. We also evaluate the effects of variations in the marriage selection mechanisms on the resulting mortality patterns....We develop and apply several simple mathematical models of the marriage selection process. In order to distinguish the potential consequences of marriage selection from marriage protection, we consider hypothetical populations in which causal effects are absent....We begin by considering an extremely simple marriage selection process and subsequently explore a more realistic selection model based on recent death and marriage rates for Japan."     

人口分层下农民对现代农业的需求及对策研究——基于许昌市18个村312个农户的调查

我国现代农业的发展呈现出政府推动的特征。在围绕农业科技、土地流转、农业公共服务和农业专业合作组织方面就农民对现代农业的需求状况进行分析发现,在整体上农民对发展现代农业有强烈的需求。在以年龄、学历、收入和职业为特征的人口分层视角下进一步分析可以发现,农民对发展现代农业的需求呈现出较大差异。针对这种差异,本文提出了创新现代农业科技化服务机制、完善土地规模经营的机制、健全农村就业及社会保障机制、建立农业合作组织监督管理机制的对策。     

Climate shocks and migration: an agent-based modeling approach

This is a study of migration responses to climate shocks. We construct an agent-based model that incorporates dynamic linkages between demographic behaviors, such as migration, marriage, and births, and agriculture and land use, which depend on rainfall patterns. The rules and parameterization of our model are empirically derived from qualitative and quantitative analyses of a well-studied demographic field site, Nang Rong district, northeast Thailand. With this model, we simulate patterns of migration under four weather regimes in a rice economy: (1) a reference, “normal” scenario; (2) 7 years of unusually wet weather; (3) 7 years of unusually dry weather; and (4) 7 years of extremely variable weather. Results show relatively small impacts on migration. Experiments with the model show that existing high migration rates and strong selection factors, which are unaffected by climate change, are likely responsible for the weak migration response.     

A room of one’s own or room enough for two? Access to housing and new household formation in Sweden, 1968–1992

Familistic and individualistic theories both provide explanations for recent declines in family household formation. Securing access to housing plays a key role in new household formation for both these theories. Familistic theories hypothesize a positive relationship between access to housing and new family household formation. Individualistic theories hypothesize a positive relationship between access to housing and nonfamily household formation. Here I test these hypotheses in Sweden by modeling leaving home for family and nonfamily household formation using the Swedish Family Survey and supplemental housing data. I find significant support for the familistic notion that greater access to housing increases the likelihood of family household formation. I fail to find support for the individualistic theory.

Skewed Sex Ratios at Birth and Future Marriage Squeeze in China and India, 2005–2100

I examine the potential impact of the anticipated future marriage squeeze on nuptiality patterns in China and India during the twenty-first century. I use population projections from 2005 to 2100 based on three different scenarios for the sex ratio at birth (SRB). To counteract the limitations of cross-sectional methods commonly used to assess the severity of marriage squeezes, I use a two-sex cohort-based procedure to simulate marriage patterns over the twenty-first century based on the female dominance model. I also examine two more-flexible marriage functions to illustrate the potential impact of changes in marriage schedules as a response to the marriage squeeze. Longitudinal indicators of marriage squeeze indicate that the number of prospective grooms in both countries will exceed that of prospective brides by more 50% for three decades in the most favorable scenario. Rates of male bachelorhood will not peak before 2050, and the squeeze conditions will be felt several decades thereafter, even among cohorts unaffected by adverse SRB. If the SRB is allowed to return to normalcy by 2020, the proportion of men unmarried at age 50 is expected to rise to 15% in China by 2055 and to 10% in India by 2065. India suffers from the additional impact of a delayed fertility transition on its age structures.