Correlates of subjective well-being in Northern Wisconsin

This paper presents the results of an attempt to relate socioeconomic status, family status, social participation and personal disruptions of statuses and roles to an index of life satisfaction in rural sectors of Northern Wisconsin. While income, education and occupational status and level of living explain very little of life satisfaction, social participation variables explain somewhat more and disruptions of marital ties, job, physical well-being and residence explain most. Analyses by age and sex show that contacts with friends, relatives and church attendance are more important for the young, employment for the middle-aged and village residence more important for the older persons. The analysis supports the notion that life satisfaction results from the discrepancy between the aspirations and expectations of the individual and his ability to satisfy them within his environment. Education is negatively associated with subjective well-being when other variables are controlled. The influence of social involvement upon life satisfaction suggests the need for a modification of the aspiration-attainment model to include the integrative-expressive as well as the adaptive-instrumental processes of the individual.     

Getting Older and Getting Happier with Work: An Information-Processing Explanation

Job attitudes and subjective well-being (SWB) have important relationships with one another. Moreover, job attitudes and, to an extent, SWB are related to chronological age. Owing to a ??graying?? workforce in industrialized countries, uncovering how age influences job attitudes is increasingly important. The present work explores the effects of cognitive-aging research on the item response process during attitude measurement. Research finds that older individuals attend selectively to positive affective experiences and weigh affective experiences more heavily during judgment than younger individuals. Based on cognitive-aging research, we propose an item-response process and hypothesize that chronological age results in a specific form of measurement non-equivalence. Our hypothesis is tested on 2 different samples of university employees, across 3 different job attitudes rooted in emotional experiences. Results indicate age-related measurement non-equivalence across all 3 attitudes such that older employees report more positive job attitudes than younger employees even when controlling for the latent attitude construct. Our findings suggest caution in interpreting of age-satisfaction correlations, focusing greater attention on understanding item response processes of older versus younger individuals and increased attention to job-related emotional experience for older employees.     

Age,Health and Life Satisfaction Among Older Europeans

In this paper we investigate how age affects the self-reported level of life satisfaction among the elderly in Europe. By using a vignette approach, we find evidence that age influences life satisfaction through two counterbalancing channels. On the one hand, controlling for the effects of all other variables, the own perceived level of life satisfaction increases with age. On the other hand, given the same true level of life satisfaction, older respondents are more likely to rank themselves as “dissatisfied” with their life than younger individuals. Detrimental health conditions and physical limitations play a crucial role in explaining scale biases in the reporting style of older individuals.     

Out of Sight,Out of Mind: Including Group Quarters Residents With Household Residents Can Change What We Know About Working-Age People With Disabilities

Information about residents of institutional and noninstitutional group quarters (GQ), particularly those with disabilities, has been limited by gaps in survey data, and statistics based on data that exclude some or all GQ residents are biased as estimates of total population statistics. We used the 2006 and 2007 American Community Survey (ACS) to identify the distribution of working-age populations with and without disabilities by major residence type and to assess the sensitivity of disability statistics to GQ residence. Our findings show that (1) of those with disabilities, about 1 in 13 males and 1 in 33 females live in GQ; (2) GQ rates are higher for individuals reporting mental, self-care, or go-outside-the-home disabilities than for those reporting sensory, physical, or employment disabilities; (3) younger males with disabilities are more likely to reside there, particularly at institutional GQ, reflecting their relatively high incarceration rate; (4) individuals with and without disabilities who are black, American Indian, were never married, or have less than a high school education have higher GQ residence rates; (5) 40% of male and 62% of female GQ residents have a disability; (6) adding GQ residents to household residents increases estimated disability prevalence for males by 6%, and the estimated difference between disability prevalence rates by gender nearly disappears; and (7) inclusion of the GQ population substantially lowers employment rate estimates for young males, blacks, and American Indians.     

Purchasing Piety? Coresidence of Married Children With Their Older Parents in Japan

We investigated the conditions under which married children live with their older parents in Japan. We focused on how needs and resources in each generation are associated with whether married couples live with their parents in parent-headed and child-headed households, and we also investigated difference in power relations between older and younger generations and between children and their spouses. We analyzed a nationally representative sample of older parents (n = 3,853) and their married children (n = 8,601) from the 1999 Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging (NUJLSOA). Mutinomial regression revealed that married children with relatively affluent parents tended to live with them in parent-headed households and that married children with parents who are in relatively poor health or who are widowed tended to live with them in child-headed households. We also found that less-educated married children tended to live in the households of their higher-income parents, suggesting that parents may be "purchasing" traditional arrangements with less-affluent children. In addition, children with an educational advantage over their spouses were more likely to have parents living with them in child-headed coresident households. We conclude that traditional multigenerational coresidence has become a commodity negotiated within families based on relative resources and needs within and across generations.     

The determinants and patterns of married women's labor force participation in Korea

The present study investigates the determinants and patterns of married women's labor force participation in Korea. Married women's employment in Korea is largely determined by age, urban residence, household characteristics of the husband's socioeconomic status, family income, fertility, and the lagged effect of work. Older age, rural residence, inferior household economic condition, and recent work experience are the major positive causes of married women's participation in the market work. On the other hand, younger women with preschool children, who currently reside in urban areas, enjoying better household economic conditions (due to higher socioeconomic status of husbands and/or higher family income) are the groups of women with the smallest probability of working in the market. Married women's employment pattern in Korea shows a pattern typical of less-developed and low-income countries in two aspects: married women working and characterized by a low level of education; the difference between urban and rural areas in terms of work participation pattern is remarkable. Although Korea belongs to the advanced group of currently industrializing countries, she lags behind with other developing countries in terms of married women's employment. Moreover, it is difficult to predict in advance that Korea would have similar experiences as those of contemporary advanced countries.     

Interpersonal communication and the diffusion of family planning in West Malaysia

Using data from a 1966–1967 probability sample of West Malaysian married women 15–44 years of age, this paper analyzes the characteristics of women who were active in diffusing information about family planning. The woman’s age and her parity, her educational attainment, her race, her present residence (urban-rural), and whether or not she wanted more children were significantly related to opinion leadership in bivariate tables. However, these relationships appeared to be substantial mainly because these social and demographic characteristics were highly related to whether the woman participated in discussions about family planning with other women. Among women who did participate in such discussions, the social and demographic variables were not substantially related to opinion leadership. In fact, the critical variables for opinion leadership appeared to be participation in the discussions, greater knowledge of family planning, and a higher level of family planning use. An attempt is also made to assess the effect of interpersonal communication on the adoption of family planning among women in the sample.     

The conflicting effects of delayed marriage and declining divorce rates on cumulative fertility in Indonesia

The impact of nuptiality patterns on fertility in Indonesia is examined with multivariate analysis controlling for 8 socioeconomic variables. Data were obtained from the 1987 Indonesian Contraceptive Prevalence Survey. Marriage is usually universal by age 35, and in this study all women 30 years had been married at least once. 20% were married at 15 years and 45% married at 18 years. For those married more than once, prevalence of 1st marriage was 7% for women 15-24 years, 15% for 25-34 years, and 29% for 35-49 years. In 1976 and 1987, the age at 1st marriage and number of times married were both strongly and negatively correlated. The % never marrying between 15-49 years rose from 21.5% to 26.4% between 1980-87. Cumulative fertility w as related to both age at 1st marriage and number of times married. Muslim women, women in Java and Bali, and rural women all marry at younger ages. 27% of the variance in age at 1st marriage is explained by women aged 25-34, current residence, region, religion, language, education, and work or not before marriage. The number of times married is also associated with socioeconomic characteristics without control, i.e., Muslim women 25-34 years were 3 times more likely to have been married more than once than in other faiths. With controls for socioeconomic factors, only 13% of the variance is explained and being Muslim has no statistically significant effect. The important net effects were being interviewed in Balinese, age, and age at 1st marriage. In the analysis of cumulative fertility, age at 1st marriage consistently is related to cumulative fertility in almost every socioeconomic group when age and number of times married is controlled for. Women married more than once have lower fertility. 36% of the variance is explained by all the variables. Being married more than once leads to having 2.1 fewer children. A 5-year delay in marriage leads to .75-1.1 fewer children. When other variables are controlled for, neither educational level nor prior work experience has a statistically significant effect on cumulative fertility. In the contraception analysis, women married more than once used contraception less. Among women 35-49, those marrying later had higher contraceptive use, but in general contraceptive use declined with age. More information is needed on why marriage patterns are changing.     

Climate variability and migration in the Philippines

This study investigates the effects of climatic variations and extremes captured by variability in temperature, precipitation, and incidents of typhoons on aggregate inter-provincial migration within the Philippines using panel data. Our results indicate that a rise in temperature and to some extent increased typhoon activity increase outmigration, while precipitation does not have a consistent, significant effect. We also find that temperature and typhoons have significant negative effects on rice yields, a proxy for agricultural productivity, and generate more outmigration from provinces that are more agriculturally dependent and have a larger share of rural population. Finally, migration decisions of males, younger individuals, and those with higher levels of education are more sensitive to rising temperature and typhoons. We conclude that temperature increase and to some extent typhoon activities promote migration, potentially through their negative effect on crop yields. The migration responses of males, more educated, and younger individuals are more sensitive to these climatic impacts.     

The differential migration of population in China: the analysis on sample survey data on urban population migration in 74 towns]

The paper analyzed data from a migration survey in 74 Chinese cities and towns in 1986. Several characteristics of the migrant population were found from the data analysis. The biggest proportion of migrants was in 20-24 age group. This age group sent 26.1% of the migrants to metro-cities, 27.6% to large cities, 25.1% to median sized cities, 22.4% to small cities, and 22.2% to towns. Migrants in the 15-29 age groups accounted for 50% of the migrants to different-sized cities and towns. Female migration is 4.2-15.4% lower than male. The proportion migrating because of marriage ranged between 84/7-92.5% to different-sized cities for females, which is much higher than for males. The level of education in the migrant population is higher than in the general population, as educational qualifications are important for job opportunities. Those with middle school and above education, make up the bulk of the migrants, and 30-40% of the migrant population to big cities increased their educational level after migrating. The currently and never married comprise, the majority of the migrant population, while the number of widowed and divorced is minimal (2 and 0.4%, respectively). Most of the widowed were 60 years old and migrated for subsistence to cities where their children lived. Among the unmarried migrants, female make up 1/3. Whereas among the married, there are more females than males.     

Childlessness Among Men in Australia

This paper examines childlessness in later adult life among males in Australia. The data are from 1,610 males aged 45–59 interviewed in 2001 for Wave 1 of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, a large-scale, nationwide, longitudinal survey of the household population. Staged logistic regression models are used to identify the early lifecourse antecedents of a man being childless in later life and the mediating effects of work-related variables and duration of union. The results show that the father’s and mother’s occupations, the level and type of education, and birthplace are important early lifecourse antecedents of whether a man is childless in later life. The lengths of time a man has been in married and cohabiting and his current occupation are found shown to have significant relationships with whether he is childless.     

Residential patterns of parents and their married children in contemporary China: A life course approach

This paper examines the residential pattern of parents and their married children in contemporary China. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey (1991, 1993, 1997), the analysis shows that the residential pattern of parents and their married children is not a static phenomenon, but changes over the life span. The analysis provides evidence that parental residence often responds to changed circumstances over the life course, adjusting to the need of married children as well as that of their parents. It is found that childcare needs, death of one parent, and health status of parents all play important roles in transitions in parental residence.     

A Comparison of Older Informal Caregivers and Non-Caregivers Living in Non-Metropolitan Areas

The primary purpose of this study was tocompare the quality of life, health, and socialsupport of caregivers and non-caregivers age 65or older. A secondary purpose was to examineage identity in these two groups. This samplewas taken from a large quality of life surveyof 875 individuals age 55 or older living incommunities in northern British Columbia,Canada (Michalos et al.,2001). We restricted our sample to (a)individuals 65 years or older because we wereparticularly interested in seniors, and (b)married individuals because preliminaryanalyses indicated that marital status was apotentially confounding variable in thecaregiver/non-caregiver comparisons. Thus, oursample consisted of 239 married,community-dwelling respondents ranging in agefrom 65 to 86 years, with an average age of71.8 years. Of these respondents, 48.5% werefemales and 26.4% were caregivers. Generallyspeaking, caregivers and non-caregivers werenot significantly different in terms of qualityof life, self-reported health, and most aspectsof social support and age identity. Seniors,whether they were caregivers or not, reportedpositive levels of quality of life and healthstatus. Caregivers and non-caregivers, however,did differ in terms of: (a) their satisfactionwith their romantic relationships, withcaregivers being less satisfied, and (b) theage they felt mentally with caregivers feelingslightly older mentally than non-caregivers.Thus, caregiver status alone does not appear toresult in lower levels of quality of life,poorer mental and physical health, lower levelsof social support, or older age identitiesoverall in older, married adults living innon-metropolitan areas.     

Perceptions of Caregivers of Elderly Parents by College Students:

College students (144 females and 96 males) evaluated a briefly depicted stimulus person on 31 7-point bipolar scales that described personality traits, job performance characteristics and role overload variables. Each participant rated one of eight employed married adults who was described as either female or male, eithcr providing care for an elderly mother ("primary caregiver") or hiring someone to provide such care ("secondary caregiver"), and as having two children who either still lived or no longer lived at home. Women were viewed as experiencing more role overload than men. Primary caregivers were perceived as experiencing more role overload, as being less job-oriented, and as being more nurturant than secondary caregivers.     

人口流动家庭化及其影响因素——以北京市为例

文章基于2006年北京市1‰流动人口抽样调查,考察北京市流动人口的家庭模式及其流动家庭化的影响因素。调查结果显示,北京市流动人口的家庭化率已达到60%。流动人口家庭模式是以一对夫妻户和一对夫妻加孩子户为主的核心家庭为主导,以一代户和二代户为主。3/4的已婚流动人口携带了配偶,有孩子的流动人口中有一半携带了孩子,这些孩子中有近20%是在北京出生的。流动人口的平均家庭规模为2人,明显小于全国农村的平均家庭规模(3.4人)。流动人口的个人特征及在京居住地显著影响人口流动家庭化,同时还发现非经济因素成为比经济因素更为重要的人口流动家庭化影响因素。     

Eastern Visayas: profile of the region's volunteer outreach worker

Volunteer outreach workers in Eastern Visayas (Region 8) who tend to remain in the Philippine Population Program are able to plan for the welfare of the family, are seriously concerned about the welfare of the community, are traditional in their beliefs about family decision making, are moderately innovative, and are relatively dissatisfied with community life. The research report submitted to the regional office of the Commission on Population (Popcom) by the Regional Research Center for Population, Leyte State College, indicated that Popcom recognizes the importance of community based fieldworkers in the delivery of its services. The study was conducted in line with efforts to improve the system of recruiting volunteer workers and to develop a more effective service delivery scheme. The researchers randomly selected a representative sample of volunteer workers--265 active and 86 inactive--from the provinces of Leyte, Southern Leyte, Eastern Samar, Western Samar and Northern Samar, the subprovince of Biliran, and the cities of Tacloban, Ormoc, and Calbayog. The active volunteer worker of Eastern Visayas is female, between 36-40 years old, married, and the mother of 3-5 children. She also considers the size of her family to be "just right." The volunteer worker believes the father is the prinicipal decision maker in the family and that parents should always be consulted on matters concerning their children. The inactive volunteer worker is also female, in the same age bracket, married, and with 3-5 children, and she also does not want to have additional children. She is more innovative and more receptive to change than the active volunteer worker. She is more satisfied with community life, is modern in her beliefs as to who is the authority in the family, and believes that children also should have a part in making family decisions. Mobility in terms of residence is an important factor in the decision of the volunteer worker to remain in or drop out of the program.     

The Importance of Spousal Education for the Self-Rated Health of Married Adults in the United States

Education’s benefits for individuals’ health are well documented, but it is unclear whether health benefits also accrue from the education of others in important social relationships. We assess the extent to which individuals’ own education combines with their spouse’s education to influence self-rated health among married persons aged 25 and older in the United States (N = 337,846) with pooled data from the 1997–2010 National Health Interview Survey. Results from age- and gender-specific models revealed that own education and spouse’s education each share an inverse association with fair/poor self-rated health among married men and women. Controlling for spousal education substantially attenuated the association between individuals’ own education and fair/poor self-rated health and the reduction in this association was greater for married women than married men. The results also suggest that husbands’ education is more important for wives’ self-rated health than vice versa. Spousal education particularly was important for married women aged 45–64. Overall, the results imply that individuals’ own education and spousal education combine to influence self-rated health within marriage. The results highlight the importance of shared resources in marriage for producing health.     

Migration and fertility in the Philippines: Hendershot's selectivity model revisited

A demographer compared 1983 data on 5092 currently married migrant and nonmigrant women living in the Philippines to determine whether migration was still selective in terms of fertility behavior or not. Fertility was basically the same between migrant and nonmigrant women in their early reproductive years, but clear differences existed between older migrants and nonmigrants as indicated by children ever born (CEB). In fact, migration did not significantly affect cumulative fertility at all (correlation ratio=.03). Moreover its effect was further reduced when the researchers controlled for age and duration of marriage. Besides level of education and contraceptive use status contributed more to explanations of fertility differentials (correlation ratio=.09 for both) than did migration. The mean number of CEB adjusted for all variables fell with level of education from 4.18 for those with primary education to 3.63 to those with college education. This result identified education as a means to reduce high fertility in the Philippines. On the other hand, the mean was higher among women who ever used contraception than it was for those who never used it (4.21 vs. 3.72). Apparently considerable family size motivated mothers to use contraception. Since women who migrated to cities tended to be in the beginning of their reproductive period, considerable natural increase could occur in urban areas. Therefore the Philippines needed to devise a strategy for reducing fertility among migrant women as well as strategies for other groups such as professional/career oriented women and women who remained at home to tend to children and/or the home.     

Types of Personal Social Networks of Older Adults in Portugal

This study presents and discusses a three-dimensional typology for personal social networks of Portuguese older adults. We used a K-means cluster analysis of structural, functional and relational-contextual variables of the networks of 612 participants aged 65?+?(M?=?76?±?7.6), mostly women (63%). Four types of networks emerged: family networks, friendship networks, neighbourhood networks and institutional networks. The most frequent are family networks (61.8%), constituted by 94.6% of family ties, on average, attesting the familistic nature of the older persons’ networks in Portugal, followed by friendship networks (23.5%) and neighbourhood networks (11.9%). The less frequent type is the institutional network (2.8%), dominated by formal ties (M?=?59.3%). Sociographic profiles reveal that family networks are more likely to be held by middle-old focal subjects, married or widowed, and with children. Friendship and neighbourhood networks are held by young-old subjects with different marital status, many of them living alone, with a higher proportion of men with friendship networks. Institutional networks are held by old–old, widowed or single with no children. The presented typology contributes to understand social support needs and social isolation. The conclusions allow to anticipate social services’ demand trajectories and to propose intervention plans and social policy measures to promote the wellbeing of the older population.

     

Gender, educational attainment, and the impact of parental migration on children left behind

Estimation of the causal effect of parental migration on children’s educational attainment is complicated by the fact that migrants and nonmigrants are likely to differ in unobservable ways that also affect children’s educational outcomes. This paper suggests a novel way of addressing this selection problem by looking within the family to exploit variation in siblings’ ages at the time of parental migration. The basic assumption underlying the analysis is that parental migration will have no effect on the educational outcomes of children who are at least 20?years old because they have already completed their education. Their younger siblings, in contrast, may still be in school, and thus will be affected by the parental migration experience. The results point to a statistically significant positive effect of paternal US migration on education for girls, suggesting that pushing a father’s US migration earlier in his daughter’s life can lead to an increase in her educational attainment of up to 1?year relative to delaying migration until after she has turned 20?years old. In contrast, paternal domestic migration has no statistically significant effect on educational attainment for girls or boys, suggesting that father absence does not play a major role in determining children’s educational outcomes. Instead, these results suggest that the marginal dollars from US migrant remittances appear to enable families to further educate their daughters. Thus, policymakers should view international migration as a potential pathway by which families raise educational attainments of girls in particular.