Hidden in Plain Sight: Global Labor Force Exchange in the Chinese American Population, 1880–1940

Despite a once‐conspicuous presence in the Western United States, little is known demo‐graphically about the Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. The widely accepted model of a declining male “sojourner society,” beset by draconian restrictions on immigration and the impossibility of family formation, is seemingly contradicted by the continuous economic vitality of urban Chinatowns in the United States. This article tests the largely unexamined demographic structure of the Chinese population in the United States through the application of cohort‐component projection on census data from 1880 through 1940, including data recently made available as part of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). The results fail to support the model of passive population decline, suggesting instead that the Chinese actively engaged in a collective strategy of long‐distance labor exchange to maximize economic productivity among Chinese workers in the United States.     

Trends in Spouses’ Shared Time in the United States, 1965–2012

Despite major demographic changes over the past 50 years and strong evidence that time spent with a spouse is important for marriages, we know very little about how time with a spouse has changed—or not—in the United States. Using time diary data from 1965–2012, we examine trends in couples’ shared time in the United States during a period of major changes in American marriages and families. We find that couples without children spent more total time together and time alone together in 2012 than they did in 1965, with total time and time alone together both peaking in 1975. For parents, time spent together increased between 1965 and 2012, most dramatically for time spent with a spouse and children. Decomposition analyses show that changes in behavior rather than changing demographics explain these trends, and we find that the increases in couples’ shared time are primarily concentrated in leisure activities.     

Mortality decline in the people's Republic of China and the United States

Abstract From mortality levels in 1949 similar to those in the United States during the nineteenth century, China claims to have reduced mortality to levels comparable to those in the United States 30 years ago. The rapidity of this recent transition and its fragmentary statistical verification have made analysts doubt these claims. The purpose of this paper is to assess medical evidence which indicates that the rate of mortality decline has been rapid indeed, primarily due to the unique social organization of Chinese public health practices.     

Mortality decline in the people's Republic of China and the United States

From mortality levels in 1949 similar to those in the United States during the nineteenth century, China claims to have reduced mortality to levels comparable to those in the United States 30 years ago. The rapidity of this recent transition and its fragmentary statistical verification have made analysts doubt these claims. The purpose of this paper is to assess medical evidence which indicates that the rate of mortality decline has been rapid indeed, primarily due to the unique social organization of Chinese public health practices.     

The Great Convergence: Gender and Unpaid Work in Europe and the United States

Over the past decades, men's and women's time use in industrialized nations has changed dramatically, suggesting a gender revolution. Women increased their time in paid work and reduced time in unpaid activities, while men increased their time in unpaid work, but not enough to compensate for women's retreat. We investigate developments regarding men's and women's unpaid work across Europe and the United States, using time diary data from the mid‐1980s and onward. We find evidence for gender convergence in unpaid work over time, but different trends for housework and childcare. Gender convergence in housework primarily resulted from women reducing their time, whereas childcare time increased for both sexes, resulting in convergence only where men increased more than did women. Decomposition analyses show that trends in housework and childcare are explained by changes in behavior rather than compositional changes in population characteristics. Though level differences in unpaid work persist, our findings regarding trends support gender convergence in that they are general across country contexts that vary regarding policy and social norms about gender, family, and work.     

A family affair: Evidence of chain migration during the mass emigration from the county of Halland in Sweden to the United States in the 1890s

This paper examines the influence of individual and household factors on an individual’s propensity to emigrate from Halland, a region in south-west Sweden, to the United States during the era of mass migration in the late nineteenth century. The study has a case–control design, using individual-level longitudinal data for a group of emigrants (cases) and a group of non-emigrants (controls). Results indicate the importance of a family’s emigration history; individuals whose relatives had previously moved to the United States were more likely to emigrate themselves. In addition, the results also show how this impact varied between groups and how other factors relating to the individual’s life situation affected the migration decision. Thus, this paper shows how chain migration and migration networks play important roles during times of mass migration.     

The reversal of the gender gap in education and relative divorce risks: A matter of alternatives in partner choice?

Recent evidence from the United States suggests that the reversal of the gender gap in education was associated with changes in relative divorce risks: hypogamous marriages, where the wife was more educated than the husband, used to have a higher divorce risk than hypergamous marriages, where the husband was more educated, but this difference has disappeared. One interpretation holds that this may result from cultural change, involving increasing social acceptance of hypogamy. We propose an alternative mechanism that need not presuppose cultural change: the gender-gap reversal in education has changed the availability of alternatives from which highly educated women and men can choose new partners. This may have lowered the likelihood of women leaving husbands with less education and encouraged men to leave less educated spouses. We applied an agent-based model to twelve European national marriage markets to illustrate that this could be sufficient to create a convergence in divorce risks.     

Geographic Divergence in Mortality in the United States

The United States trails other developed countries in adult mortality, a process that has become more pronounced over the past several decades. However, comparisons are complicated by substantial geographic variations in mortality within the United States. The second half of the twentieth century was characterized by a substantial divergence in adult mortality between the South and the rest of the United States. The article examines trends in US geographic variation in mortality between 1965 and 2004, in particular the aggregate divergence in mortality between the southern states and states with more favorable mortality experience. Relatively high smoking‐attributable mortality in the South explains 50–100 percent of the divergence for men between 1965 and 1985 and up to 50 percent for women between 1985 and 2004. There is also a geographic correspondence between the contribution of smoking and other factors, suggesting that smoking may be one piece of a more complex health‐related puzzle.     

The mathematics of sex and marriage,revisited

We analyze the problem of modeling marriages in a two‐sex model of population dynamics. We first deal with the problem of incomplete and inconsistent census data and then use a simulator to compare the performance of a variety of marriage functions in modeling births and couples during the ten‐year period between consecutive U.S. censuses. Unlike most empirical methods for comparing marriage functions based on goodness of fit, the differences in the projections of the various functions in our method are of the same magnitude (or even smaller) than the errors between the projected and real data. We observe that for the population of the United States, the harmonic mean function frequently found and used in the literature is a quite poor performer when compared with many other functions in the family we use.     

Mobility,Stagnation, or Attrition? Diverse Earning Trajectories in a Cohort of Foreign‐born Men

Researchers and policymakers frequently debate about the integration of immigrants into the US economy. These debates are often based on limited data that do not capture the diversity of immigrants who arrived in the later twentieth century. Related research has also struggled to incorporate the experience of short‐term immigrants or immigrants who move in and out of the labor force. Using records from the Social Security Administration, we track the complete cohort of foreign‐born men who received social security numbers in 1978 through their subsequent working years and characterize their earning trajectories. We find that the share of foreign‐born men with low earnings declined over time, mainly due to attrition from the formal labor force. We also show, for the first time, that immigrants’ employment and earning histories vary considerably by their countries of origin: while those from several countries in Asia and Africa experienced substantial earnings growth and tended to stay in the United States for the long term, men from Central America and the Caribbean experienced more stagnation and had high levels of temporary and permanent attrition from the formal labor force. We end by discussing the historical contingencies and socioeconomic contexts—in sending countries and the United States—that shaped these trajectories.     

From natural fertility to family limitation: The onset of fertility transition in a sample of German villages

Utilizing data from a sample of German village genealogies, it is possible to document the changes in reproductive patterns on the family level that started to take place in Germany during the nineteenth century and formed the basis for the secular decline in fertility which eventually encompassed the entire country. One striking finding from this study was the substantial diversity among the small sample of villages in terms of the timing of the emergence of family limitation. While couples in all villages who married during the last half of the eighteenth century appeared to be characterized predominantly by natural fertility the emergence of family limitation began as early as the turn of the nineteenth century in some places and as late as the end of the nineteenth century in others. Occupational differentials with respect to family limitation were also examined. There is little evidence that changes in birth spacing played an important part in the initial phase of the fertility trnsition. Rather, the underlying process appears to involve a change from fertility patterns that were characterized by the absence of parity-dependent control to one in which attempts to terminate childbearing in response to the number of children already born becomes widespread.     

The Sibsize Revolution and Social Disparities in Children’s Family Contexts in the United States, 1940–2012

This article points to a sharp decline in children’s sibling numbers (sibsize) that occurred in the United States since the 1970s and was large enough among children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) (particularly black children) to amount to a revolution in their family circumstances. It interprets sibsize decline as a source of social convergence in children’s family contexts that ran counter to trends toward social divergence caused by the rise of lone parenthood. The article is based on new estimates of differences in children’s sibsize and lone parenthood by race and maternal education generated from public-use samples from the Census of Population and Current Population Survey (CPS), focusing especially on the period 1940–2012. I discuss some methodological and substantive challenges for existing scholarship arising from the findings and point to questions for future research.     

Marital Processes, Arranged Marriage, and Contraception to Limit Fertility

An international transition away from familially arranged marriages toward participation in spouse choice has endured for decades and continues to spread through rural Asia today. Although we know that this transformation has important consequences for childbearing early in marriage, we know much less about longer-term consequences of this marital revolution. Drawing on theories of family and fertility change and a rural Asian panel study designed to measure changes in both marital and childbearing behaviors, this study seeks to investigate these long-term consequences. Controlling for social changes that shape both marital practices and childbearing behaviors, and explicitly considering multiple dimensions of marital processes, we find evidence consistent with an independent, long-standing association of participation in spouse choice with higher rates of contraception to terminate childbearing. These results add a new dimension to the evidence linking revolutions in marital behavior to long-term declines in fertility and suggest that new research should consider a broader range of long-term consequences of changing marital processes.     

Two and a half centuries of demographic history in a Bavarian village

Abstract A village genealogy containing family histories of couples married between 1692 and 1939 serves as the basis for a study of the demographic history of a Bavarian village. The past patterns of marriage, re-marriage, widowhood, illegitimacy, bridal pregnancy, marital fertility, family size, and birth intervals are examined. Both the age at marriage and illegitimacy increased and then declined during the nineteenth century, apparently in response to changes in restrictive marriage legislation. Differences in fertility for occupational groups were insignificant. Marital fertility remained extremely high before 1900 suggesting the absence of any substantial family limitation within marriage. A rise in marital fertility that occurred during the last half of the nineteenth century appears to result from a change in breast-feeding customs. The actual number of children surviving to maturity for most couples was kept quite low, however, through late marriage and high infant mortality. Only during the twentieth century are substantial declines in infant mortality and fertility evident.     

Marriage and divorce in twentieth century American cohorts

Marital status life tables have provided a basis for describing the marriage, divorce, and mortality experience of U.S. cohorts born 1888-1950. In brief, marriage occurred earlier and became more universal from the earliest cohorts to those of the late 1930s. More recent cohorts show declines in the proportion ever marrying and increases in the mean age at marriage. Period data for 1980 and cumulative cohort data by age suggest the likelihood of a continuing retreat from first marriage. Divorce has been rising steadily, with the latest cohorts indicating that 46 percent of male marriages and 42 percent of female marriages will end in divorce. Period data for males in 1980 raise the possibility that levels of divorce may have reached a peak, but cumulative cohort data by age show no such pattern. The present results are consistent with the view that a fundamental change in the traditional concept of marriage is underway. Traditional marriage involved the husband providing the wife with economic support and protection in return for her companionship and maternal services. Strong social pressures urged men and women to marry, and made the coveted services married persons provided each other difficult to obtain elsewhere. Recent economic changes have undermined the social and economic forces that maintained the institution of marriage. The U.S. economy has grown to include a large service sector in its labor force, and that growth has produced a dramatic increase in female labor force opportunities (Oppenheimer, 1970). The resultant large scale participation of women in economic activity blurs the traditional division of labor by sex, and goes to the very heart of the traditional marriage "bargain." At the same time, economic changes have weakened family ties by encouraging lower fertility, stressing achieved as opposed to ascribed characteristics, and fostering geographical mobility (Goode, 1970). The "marital union" of the past may be giving way to the "marital partnership" of the future, which will accommodate informal as well as formal marriages, less dependence between spouses, greater egalitarianism, lower fertility, and higher levels of divorce.     

Family Instability and Early Initiation of Sexual Activity in Western Kenya

Epidemiological, economic, and social forces have produced high levels of volatility in family and household structure for young people growing up in sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades. However, scholarship on the family to date has not examined the influence of this family instability on young people’s well-being. The current study employs unique life history calendar data from Western Kenya to investigate the relationship between instability in caregiving and early initiation of sexual activity. It draws on a body of work on parental union instability in the United States, and examines new dimensions of family change. Analyses reveal a positive association between transitions in primary caregiver and the likelihood of early sexual debut that is rapidly manifested following caregiver change and persists for a short period. The association is strongest at early ages, and there is a cumulative effect of multiple caregiver changes. The results highlight the importance of studying family stability in sub-Saharan Africa, as distinct from family structure, and for attention to dimensions such as age and recency.     

The elderly who live alone in the united states: Historical perspectives on household change

One of the most dramatic changes in the life of the elderly in the United States in the twentieth century is the rise in the proportion of elderly widows living alone. This paper examines this transformation by comparing the determinants of elderly widows’ living alone at four points in time, in 1910, 1940, 1960, and 1990. Logistic regression models of the probability of living alone are estimated. The results of these models are used to calculate the expected proportion of elderly widows living alone in various hypothetical scenarios of social change. This analysis suggests that no single factor is responsible for the rise in living alone among the elderly. Value changes, as represented by a variable for time, are shown to have strong and direct effects on the increased probability of living alone in old age in the late twentieth century, independent of the effect of rising income levels. These results are discussed in light of previous research on living arrangements of the elderly, which articulates demographic, economic, and cultural explanations for change.     

Period‐Based Mortality Change: Turning Points in Trends since 1950

We investigate a major turning point in mortality trends at adult ages that occurred for many low‐mortality countries in the late 1960s or early 1970s. We analyze patterns of total and cause‐specific mortality over the past 60 years using data from the Human Mortality Database and the World Health Organization. We focus on four broad categories of causes of death: heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, smoking‐related cancers, and all other cancers. We use a two‐slope regression model to assess the timing and magnitude of turning points in mortality trends over this era, making separate analyses by sex, age, and cause of death. The age pattern of temporal changes is given particular attention. Our results demonstrate convincingly that period‐based factors were very significant in the onset of the “cardiovascular revolution” in the years around 1970. In general, although cohort processes cannot be ruled out as a driver of mortality change in recent decades (especially for mortality due to smoking‐related cancers), the evidence reviewed here suggests that period factors have been the dominant force behind the mortality trends of high‐income countries during this era.     

Marriage (Still) Matters: The Contribution of Demographic Change to Trends in Childlessness in the United States

Childlessness in the United States nearly doubled between 1980 and 2000. Other dramatic changes in the U.S. population also took place over this period—notably, women’s average educational attainment increased, and the proportion marrying declined—but the impact of these changes on childlessness has not been formally examined. In this article, I use data from the Current Population Survey Fertility Supplements (1995, 1998, 2004, 2008) and logistic regression and regression-based decomposition techniques to assess the contribution of changes in educational attainment, marriage behavior, and racial/ethnic composition on population levels of childlessness in the United States. Results show that increases in the proportion of women unmarried by age 40 contributed most to the increase in childlessness in the late twentieth century, although these increases were offset somewhat by increased childbearing among unmarried women. The rising proportion of women with a college degree also explained a substantial amount of the increase in childless women.     

Man/boy love and the American gay movement

The issue of man/boy love has intersected the gay movement since the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the first gay rights movement in Germany. In the United States, as the gay movement has retreated from its vision of sexual freedom for all in favor of integration into existing social and political structures, it has sought to marginalize cross-generational love as a "non-gay" issue. The two movements continue to overlap, amid signs of mutual support as well as tension--a state of affairs that also characterizes their interrelationship in other countries. This article offers an overview and analysis of that interrelationship in the United States since the Stonewall Riots in New York City in June 1969, which marked the beginning of a reinvigorated struggle for gay liberation.