A study of environmental and behavioral factors affecting pregnancy outcome in an Italian community

This study sought to identify environmental factors (socioeconomic conditions, work conditions, service availability, and so on) and behavioral factors (preventive health behaviors, pre- and postnatal care, and so on) which might be related to pregnancy outcome (childbirth, still birth, infant death, abortion). For this purpose high risk families (all families where an infant death or still birth had occurred in the last five years, a total of 253 cases) were compared with a random sample of the families where a normal child was born and survived during the same period (a sample of 239 cases). The results contain data on: (a) socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of study and control cases (residence, housing conditions, marital status or parents, work activity, and educational level): (b) the health status of the mother, prior and during pregnancy; (c) preventive health behavior such as prenatal care, nutrition, and use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol; (d) working condition of the mother during pregnancy, type of work, work-related environmental risks, leave from work, and transportation; and (e) postnatal care and breast feeding patterns. The findings are discussed in terms of the present and future educational and service needs of the population.This study was made possible by the financial assistance of the World Health Organization, Division of Family Health. Dr. Figa-Talamanca is affiliated with the Institute of General Physiology, University of Rome, 00100 Rome, Italy.     

The effect of maternal employment on teenage childbearing

This paper estimates the effect of a mothers employment on her teenage daughters likelihood of birth. Using data from the United States, the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988, the author finds that teenagers with working mothers who attend relatively wealthy schools are more likely (77%) to have a birth compared to teens who attend similar schools but have non-working mothers. In contrast, teenagers with working mothers who attend relatively poor schools are less likely (18%) to have a birth compared to teens who attend similar schools but have non-working mothers.I am indebted to Marcia Carlson, Thomas DeLeire, Angela Fertig, Brian Jacob, Darren Lubotsky, Scott Lynch, Susan Mayer, Sara McLanahan, Robert Michael, German Rodriguez, seminar participants at Princeton University and The University of Chicago, and two anonymous referees for insightful suggestions made on earlier versions of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge financial support from a Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research Graduate Fellowship, a Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University, and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University, which is supported by center grant 5 P30 HD32030 from the NICHD. Responsible editor: Junsen Zhang.     

The impact of cash-benefit reform on parents’ labour force participation

This paper evaluates the impact of a recent Norwegian family-policy reform. The reform provides benefits of up to NOK 3,000 (approximately € 400) per month to families with one- to three-year-old children, who do not utilize state-subsidized day-care centres. We investigate the reforms effect on parents labour force participation. We find that, on average, the reform reduced womens labour force participation and increased the specialization of work between couples. We find that the effect of the reform depends on womens schooling. Specifically, the labour force participation of highly educated mothers fell by more than that of mothers with less education.I am grateful to Associate Professor Espen Bratberg and Professor Alf Erling for their valuable comments. My special thanks to Kjell Vaage, Arild Aakvik and Afsane Bjorvatn for helpful suggestions. This paper was presented in a seminar at the Department of Economics, University of Bergen, Norway. I am thankful to the participants of the seminar for their positive feedback. The paper has also benefited from the reports given by three anonymous referees. I am also thankful to Professor Heather Joshi for helpful remarks on the paper. Responsible editor: Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Interpreting demographic effects in duration analyses of first birth intervals

Estimated demographic effects in proportional hazard models of first birth intervals could reflect time-invariant differences in the risk of a birth, or differences in the timing of a shift in the risk, or both. This paper attempts to distinguish between these possibilities. The procedure is to estimate a more general model than the proportional hazard specification, in which the evolution of the risk of a birth can differ with demographic characteristics. The proportional hazard specification is nested within this more general model. Consequently, the consistency of the data with the risk or the timing interpretation of demographic effects can be tested. The data studied do not lead to a rejection of the proportional hazard specification.Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania. The initial stage of this research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. I have benefited from insightful comments from David Bloom, Andrew Foster, Zvi Griliches, V. Joseph Hotz, Duncan Thomas, anonymous referees, and participants in seminars at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, and in the Economic Demography sessions of the 1988 Population Association of America annual meetings. Any remaining errors are my own.     

Fertility in China 1982–1990: Gender equality as a complement to wealth flows theory

Some scholars claim there is little variation in Chinese fertility because of coercive family planning policies. This research, however, demonstrates that other factors contribute to significant variation in fertility rates among China's 30 provinces/administrative divisions. Although family planning and socioeconomic development are found to explain significant amounts of variation in fertility for both the 1982 and 1990 census cross-sections, it was also found that gender equality in education had become significant by 1990. Path model results that lag the effects of 1982 socioeconomic development and gender equality in education also indicate that they both have sizable direct effects and moderate indirect effects through family planning behavior on 1990 fertility rates. Discussions include the possibility that the recent free market and institutional reforms, e.g., the decollectivization of agriculture, have contributed a social structure whereby many Chinese families have increased awareness of the opportunity costs associated with their reproductive decision making.     

Three Centuries of Global Population Growth: A Spatial Referenced Population (Density) Database for 1700–2000

The Earths surface has changed considerably over the past centuries. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1700s, humans from the Old World started to colonize the New World. The colonization processes lead to major changes in global land use and land cover. Large parts of the original land cover have been altered (e.g., deforestation), leading to extra emissions of GHGs to the atmosphere and enhancing global climate change. The spatial and temporal aspects are still not very well known. More and more global integrated environmental assessments concerning global sustainability require long time series of global change indicators, of which population is an important one. This study presents an update of the geo-referenced historical population maps for the period 1700–2000, part of the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), which can be used in integrated models of global change and/or global sustainability.     

Welfare,work, and changes in mothers’ living arrangements in low-income families

Data from a two-wave survey of low-income families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio are used to replicate recent reports of a modest increase in the number of low-income children living in two-adult families and to analyze the increase. We find that most of the increase occurred through the addition of a man other than the biological father to the household and that more of it occurred through cohabitation than through marriage. Moreover, across the two waves, cohabiting and marital unions were highly unstable. We review research on stepfamilies and on instability in childrens living arrangements, and we conclude that the kinds of two-adult families being formed in these low-income central-city neighborhoods may not benefit children as much as policy-makers hope. In addition, we investigate the associations between marital and cohabiting transitions, on the one hand, and transitions into and out of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) receipt, employment, and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) usage between the two waves on the other. We find that marital transitions are related to TANF and employment transitions but that cohabiting transitions are not. We suggest that low-income mothers may view marriage as more of an economic partnership than cohabitation and may expect more of an economic contribution from a husband than from a cohabiting partner.     

The welfare effects of labour force growth with internationally mobile capital

The effects of labour supply growth on the welfare of preexisting destination and non-emigrating source populations are analysed. This growth occurs in open economies where free trade in capital goods is possible. Traditional small economy arguments for population growth rely on the existence of priced though internationally immobile factors. When all factors are freely-traded and population grows naturally the case rests either on market distortions or common property within families. In an integrated world labour growth can lead to capital flight and increasing wage differentials. With international interactions, immigration increases preexisting welfare in destination countries but generally (not always) reduces it for non-emigrants in source countries. Immigration provides efficiency gains to all originally resident in source countries. Natural population growth anywhere promotes efficiency gains everywhere.     

Application of Granger-Sims causality tests to monthly fertility data, 1958–1984

When applied to monthly age specific data, Granger-Sims causality tests provide a useful technique for identifying the effective lag between business cycles and fertility in the United States. Male and female monthly age specific unemployment rates are used as a proxy for the business cycle, and test results are presented for first and higher order birth rates, as well as total age-specific monthly fertility rates. The period is subdivided (January 1958 – May 1973 and June 1973 – December 1984) in order to identify possible trends. Four results hold in all cases studied, with respect to the relationship between unemployment and fertility. (1) Noncausality is rejected in the direction from unemployment to fertility, and no feedback effect is indicated; thus the relationship is one of simple causality. (2) In the critical decision period from 9–16 months prior to realized fertility rates, the sign of the effect of unemployment on fertility is negative: this holds for both male and female unemployment rates. (3) There appears to have been a shortening of the effective lag between unemployment and fertility, of perhaps 2 – 3 months, between periods 1 (1959 – 1973) and 2 (1973 – 1984). (5) The strength of the (negative) relationship between unemployment and fertility appears to have increased from period 1 to period 2.Presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Chicago, April 30, 1987. This paper has benefitted from discussions with and comments by Andrew Weiss, Clive Granger, Lee Ohanian and Pietro Balestra, and from comments by two anonymous referees. For help in obtaining previously unpublished data, the authors are grateful to Stephanie Ventura (NCHS), G. P. Goings (BLS) and Paula Schneider (Bureau of the Census). Financial support was provided by the University of Southern California     

Measurement and determinants of socioeconomic development: A critical conspectus

The study evaluates the progress made in the past decades on the measurement of socioeconomic performance. Both income and social indicators approaches are thoroughly surveyed and an additional contribution is made to the latter by undertaking a large-scale correlation study. The results of the correlation analysis indicate a high level of correspondence between per capita GNP and various composite social indices constructed by an aggregation procedure called the Wroclaw Taxonomic Method. On the determinants of socioeconomic progress, the study examines two well-known development strategies, equity and basic needs. Besides, it suggests few other policy instruments which might influence the level of socioeconomic development. Finally, some new areas are identified for future research in this subject.     

The evolutionary basis of sex variations in the use of natural resources: Human examples

People, unlike other primates, regularly consume foods acquired by others. When people forage for a living, women and men customarily acquire different foods and consume the products of each other's work. This distinctively human sexual division of labor has seemed the hallmark of human resource use. If men and women have different economic specialties, marriage creates a social unit that deploys their different capacities to serve family needs. Other distinctively human patterns then seem to arise from this fundamental economic cooperation between the sexes. In recent decades, the use of evolutionary theory to investigate and explain social behavior across the living world has revealed pervasive conflicts of interest between (as well as within) the sexes. Application of these tools to human examples shows the sexual division of labor to be the economic aspect of different and conflicting reproductive agendas for women and men. A review of some examples from communities where people hunt and gather for a living illustrates that families are not units of common economic interest. As with other primates, males and females have different reproductive goals and these differences shape sex differences in patterns of resource use.     

Long run opportunity-costs of children according to education of the mother in the Netherlands

Children claim a large part of the parents' potential resources, particularly their time. Direct time costs arise through the time spent out of the labour force while the children are small, indirect costs are the result of lower investment into human capital. It is demonstrated in this paper that the average opportunity costs of children of lower educated mothers can be higher than those of higher educated mothers.The author wishes to thank his colleagues from de Leerstoel Vergelijkende Bevolkings- en Emancipatie-economie, especially Siv Gustafsson, John F. Ermisch and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The author is also thankful for Mr. and Mrs. van Ingen for their advice on improving the English text. Financial support from the FMO is gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editors: Siv S. Gustafsson, John F. Ermisch.     

Constructing a Quality of Life Scale for Older Chinese People in Hong Kong (HKQoLOCP)

This paper reports a multi-stagestudy carried out between 1999 and 2001 whichaimed to develop an instrument to address theneed for a culturally relevant measure ofquality of life for Chinese older persons inHong Kong and similar communities. The firststage of the research involved a focus groupstudy conducted in August 1999 which it washoped would reflect how quality of life maybe interpreted by older persons themselves. Thenext stage, a content analysis of the focusgroups, enabled the construction of aquestionnaire containing over 100 items onvarious aspects of quality of life (QoL). Thequestionnaire was reviewed by a panel ofexperts and the items were refined and reducedto 86 to which were added a further 25 itemsfor socio-demographic background. This formedthe initial instrument. The final stage was avalidation study based on a representativecommunity survey, with a sample of 3,000respondents drawn for the research team by theCensus and Statistics Department of the HongKong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)Government. The survey yielded 1,616 successfulinterviews with older persons aged 60 or above.The careful stratification of the sampleenabled us to say that subjects in all thestages of the survey had broadly similarcharacteristics to the general Hong Kongelderly population in sex and age distribution.After a rigorous process of validation, theresearch team recommended the adoption of bothan index and six domains for measuring HongKong older persons QoL. The new scale containsa total of 21 items which can be grouped intovarious domains: subjective well-being, with 4items; health with 5 items; interpersonalrelationships with 6 items; achievement-recognition with 4 items, finance and livingconditions (1 item each). The overall QoL scalehas a Cronbachs alpha of 0.72 with its domainsranging from 0.65 to 0.77 which indicates ahigh degree of statistical reliabilities. Thename recommended for the scale was Hong KongQuality of Life for Older Persons Scale-abbreviated as HKQoLOCP.     

Tribal membership requirements and the demography of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Native Americans

This paper examines the twentieth-century population recovery of Native Americans with reference to urbanization, intermarriage, and differing definitions of the Native American population from census and tribal enrollment data. The recent increase in the Native American population reflected in regular US decennial censuses since 1960 is discussed in terms of changing self-identification of individuals as Native American. Also discussed are criteria for enrollment in Native American tribes, particularly blood quantum requirements. Census enumerations are compared with tribal enrollment data, and it is illustrated that a large proportion of those identifying as Native American in the census are not enrolled in Native American tribes. Special attention is given to how Native American tribal enrollment criteria might impact future population size.     

More evidence on smoke detector effectiveness and the value of saving a life

Economic models of the fire fatality rate give estimates of smoke detector effectiveness. These estimates are much smaller than those generally accepted. Reasonable interpretation of these estimates, combined with the cost of a smoke detector and the risk of a fire death, places the smoke detector-based value of life saving in a range of $ 1.41 to $ 2.487 million 1986 dollars. The more generally accepted results of other studies of the value of life saving fall in a range of $ 1.6 to $ 8.5 million 1986 dollars. Smoke detector market data, along with effectiveness estimates from economic models, may provide a unique opportunity to estimate the value of life saving.Partial funding for this project was made available by the Kellogg Foundation through a grant to the Missouri Youth Initiative Program. An earlier version of this paper was presented as a seminar paper at the Center for Fire Research, National Institute of Standards and Technology, United States Department of Commerce, Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 8, 1990. Results were also reported at the session on Value of Life Saving: Narrowing the Range, Southern Economic Association, November 1990, New Orleans.     

Transnational Grannies: The Changing Family Responsibilities of Elderly African Caribbean-Born Women Resident in Britain

This paper explores the role and position of grandmothers in African-Caribbean families resident in Britain. The data used for this paper comes fromm a sample of 180 life-history interviews collected in 1995–1996 from three generations of Caribbean-origin people living in Britain and the Caribbean. Findings from this research suggest that African-Caribbean grandmothers resident in Britain have come to play a less active role within their immediate family compared to earlier historical periods. At the same time however, these grandmothers have come to take on a more a transnational emissary role for their family and kin located throughout North America and Europe. Caribbean-born grandmothers appear to be using more modern means for fulfilling certain traditional tasks like child shifting, story telling or acting as a social safety net. Using their agency African Caribbean-born grandmothers have been able to carve out new niches for themselves despite changes in family structure brought about by migration and settlement patterns in Britain.     

On opulence driven poverty traps

Endogenous population growth, i.e., making the rate of population growth dependent on society's opulence, causes parametric changes to have a larger impact and can cause multiplicity of steady states in a dynamic intertemporal optimization framework. This provides a simple explanation for the possibility of differing growth paths between countries (using a standard production function) or another explanation of the poverty trap. We give two examples (opulence sensitivity and production sensitivity) that both give rise to three steady states in which poor (rich) countries will evolve over time to the low (high) income steady state. In both examples there are middle income countries that will choose the low (high) income steady state if they are impatient (patient), where patience is measured through the rate of time preference o. Foreign aid in the form of a large transfer of capital from abroad enables poor and impatient middle income countries to move to the high income steady state.We would like to thank Nico Heering, Martijn Herrmann, Theo Junius, Ngo van Long, Ad Pikkemaat, John Pitchford, Lakshmi Raut, Casper de Vries, an anonymous referee, participants of workshops at the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam and especially Harry van Dalen for valuable comments. The article was presented at the fifth annual conference of the European Society of Population Economics, Pisa 1991. The views expressed in the article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the World Bank.     

Have the relative employment prospects for the low-skilled deteriorated after all?

Has the relative unemployment propensity for the low-skilled increased during the 1990s? We address this question empirically, based on two notions of low skills; i) low education, and ii) low ability, conditioned on education and work experience. Ability is identified by previous earnings. Evaluated by the education-based measure, we find that unemployment propensity has not developed unfavourably for the low-skilled. Evaluated by the ability-based measure, it has. We uncover a steady deterioration of employment prospects for persons with low ability relative to others with similar formal qualifications. The adverse employment effects of being low-skilled are stronger the higher is formal education.All correspondence to Knut Røed. The paper is part of the project Sorting, exposed groups and labour market programs financed by the Research Council of Norway. We wish to thank Rolf Aaberge, Paul Gertler, Harald Goldstein, Karl Ove Moene, Jon Strand, Steinar Strøm, Asbjrn Rødseth and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

Multiple-Scale Integrated Assessments of Societal Metabolism: Integrating Biophysical and Economic Representations Across Scales

The crucial challenge for integrated analyses of socioeconomic systems is keeping coherence in their multidimensional representation. Our approach describes the hierarchical structure of socioeconomic systems using the profile of allocation of human activity over a set of compartments defined at different hierarchical levels (e.g., whole countries, economic sectors, individual households). Compartments are characterized in terms of intensive variables (intensity of both exosomatic energy flows and added value flows per unit of human activity) and the extensive variable Total Human Activity population. In this way, relations of congruence across hierarchical levels can be used to link non-equivalent analyses. That is, changes in demographic variables, economic variables, technical coefficients, indices of environmental loading, institutional settings, and social aspirations are no longer independent of each-other even if described within different scientific disciplines.