Are Mixed-Ethnic Unions More Likely to Dissolve Than Co-Ethnic Unions? New Evidence from Britain

The increasing proportion of ethnic minorities in Britain has been paralleled by an increase in the occurrence of mixed-ethnic marriages between one White partner and an ethnic minority partner. Such marriages are thought to be at higher risk of divorce, but empirical studies so far have been inconclusive. This paper uses the Office for National Statistics longitudinal study for England and Wales to investigate whether mixed-ethnic unions are more likely to end in divorce than co-ethnic unions. We followed married couples in 1991?C2001 and examined their risks of divorce. We found evidence that mixed-ethnic unions have a higher risk of dissolution than co-ethnic unions. However, after controlling for partners?? characteristics, most importantly the younger ages of people in mixed-ethnic unions, the risk of divorce for mixed-ethnic unions was no longer elevated, but lay close to the higher risk found for the two constituent co-ethnic unions.     

Italy’s Non-Negligible Cohabitational Unions

Italy has long been regarded as the country with negligible non-marital cohabitation par excellence, but lately the pattern has begun to change and entry into consensual unions has increased strongly in younger Italian generations. This article is devoted to a study of such features between 1980 and 2003 based on the data from the Italian variant of the Gender and Generations Survey, Round 1. We consider entry into marriage and entry into cohabitation as competing risks and show how the incidence of cohabitation consistently much lower but has increased by some 70% over the 20-odd years of our study, while the marriage rate has dropped by almost as much. We find great variation across major regions of the country. The rise in cohabitation is confined to Northern and Central Italy, while the risk of marriage formation has declined strongly all over the country. Unlike previous investigations, our data suggest that non-marital cohabitation may be taking over whatever minor role civil marriage has had in Italian union formation.     

Racing Against the Biological Clock? Childbearing and Sterility Among Men and Women in Second Unions in France

In developed countries, rising rates of union disruption have induced an increase in the share of people experiencing several fertile partnerships during their fertile life-span. However, from the large-scale 1999 French Family Survey, in the 1939–1954 birth cohorts it appears that completed fertility of repartnered men is slightly higher than that of never-separated men while repartnered women have fertility levels similar to those who remain in a first intact partnership. Following this observation, this article aims to study whether people, and especially women, have enough time to have children in the context of second union before they become limited by the “biological clock”. Using a cure model, we find that once age-related sterility is controlled for, the decrease in risk of having children with age is not visible anymore up to age 40. This offers some evidence that people in their second partnership, especially women, are constrained in their childbearing by the decline in fecundity with age. Additionally, childless women seem to respond proactively to the decline in fecundity with age by accelerating childbearing.     

Second Unions Now More Stable than First? A Comparison of Separation Risks by Union Order in France

The frequency of union dissolutions increased sharply over the past 40 years in Western Europe and North America, resulting in a rapid growth in the number of persons living with a second partner. In studies of the 1980s, primarily conducted within the context of marriage, second partnerships were generally found to be less stable than first unions, but more recent studies provide more conflicting evidence. Taking the example of France, we study whether the relationship between first and second union stability indeed reversed between the 1970s and the 2000s, and how union and individual characteristics contributed to changes over time. The analysis presented here is based on the French Generations and Gender Survey (2005). The article first provides an overview of the differences in marriage, childbearing and breakup behaviours in first and second unions. Second, a piecewise linear model for repeated events is used to compare women’s dissolution risks in first and second unions. The results show that over time, the higher instability of second compared to first unions disappeared. Further, women in second unions adopted unmarried cohabitation as a living arrangement more often across the whole period and were more likely to have stepchildren, which was associated with less stable unions. Taking into account this diversity of family situations, i.e. controlling for family form and children, second unions were more stable than first unions, even during the past. At both union orders, marriage breakup risks tended to stabilise despite a continuing increase in the prevalence of separation, which suggests that cohabitation increasingly acts as a filter for marriage.     

From Pronatalism to Social Welfare? Extending Family Allowances to Minority Populations in France and Israel

An inherent tension exists between the goals ofpronatalism and the actual policies throughwhich law makers have often attempted to raisebirth rates. Proponents of pronatalism oftenprefer to raise births only to specificracial/ethnic or national groups; yet in moderndemocracies, it is unacceptable for socialpolicies to explicitly discriminate on thebasis of race, ethnicity, or national origin. Social benefits, such as family allowances,must be accessible to all citizens. The recentextension of certain previously denied familybenefits to minority populations in France andIsrael illustrates this tension and points to afuture direction in which any pronatalistintent behind family policy will likely bedownplayed in favour of a social welfareimperative.     

Competence in Communication

ＣｏｍｐｅｔｅｎｃｅｉｎＣｏｍｍｕｎｉｃａｔｉｏｎＡｄａＡ．Ｆｅｓｌｅｒ（美国）ＡｓｊｏｂｓｉｎＣｈｉｎａｃｏｎｔｉｎｕｅｔｏｄｅｍａｎｄｓｔｕｄｅｎｔｓｗｈｏｈａｖｅＥｎｇｌｉｓｈＰｒｏｆｉｃｉｅｎｃｙ，ｔｈｅｆｏｃｕｓｏｎｓｐｅａｋｉｎｇｆｌｕｅ...     

Trends in Marriage Formation in Sweden 1971–1993

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a system of annual indices of the risks of marriage and remarriage and to use the system to display such marriage risks for Swedish women over the years since 1971. Our indices are produced by applying indirect standardization to register data. The propensity to marry decreased considerably during the 1970s and it has continued to decrease also during the first half of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The decrease in marriage risks is mostly due to a decreased propensity to marry among never-married women with no children. The decrease is not so strong for never-married women with children and for divorced women. A sharp, but only temporary, deviation from the general pattern of Swedish marriage-risk trends occurred in 1989, when the number of marriages formed increased dramatically in response to the near-abolition of the public widow's pensions for women who were not married at the beginning of 1990.     

The Present Situation and Tendency in English Teaching in China

ＴｈｅＰｒｅｓｅｎｔＳｉｔｕａｔｉｏｎａｎｄＴｅｎｄｅｎｃｙｉｎＥｎｇｌｉｓｈＴｅａｃｈｉｎｇｉｎＣｈｉｎａＳｈｕＱｉｑｕａｎＳｈｕＱｉｑｕａｎ１．Ｔｈｅｐｒｅｓｅｎｔｓｉｔｕａｔｉｏｎ１．１ＡｔｐｒｉｍａｒｙａｎｄｓｅｃｏｎｄａｒｙｓｃｈｏｏｌｓＣ...     

Scholars in Liaoning University

Professor LIN Mu-xi,Being born in Dec.1954 in Shenyang,Liaoning province,China.In Economic School,Liaoning university,acting as Director,Vice Secretary of Communist Party Committee,professor,adviser to Ph.D candidates and co-adviser to post Ph.D.Being awarded the     

The Dialogue in Pygmalion

Pygmalion is one of Shaw′s best-known plays. It has been an enormous success all over the world. Pygmalion is quite distinctive in all Shaw′ plays. Generally speaking, Shaw′s plays don′f pay much attention to plets, but the plot of Pygmalion is very interesting and attractive. Seemingly, the     

Agents in branching space-times

The aim of this essay Is to make some brief suggestions on the beginnings of a theory of agentsand agency In branching spacetlmes.foe thought Is to combine the ideas of agency as developed agalnst the relatively simple background of branching time with the richer notions of Indetermlnlsm asstructured In the theory of branching space-times.My plan Is to say a little about agency In branchingtime and a little about branchlg spacetlmes,and then ask how the two can be brought together.Atthe end there Is an appendix,extracted from Belnap,Perloffand Xu 2001(Facing the future,hence-forth FF),listing In a convenient form all the main ideas about agents and their cholcesln branchingtime.     

Characteristics of Women in Consanguineous Marriages in Egypt, 1988–2000

This article reviews three mechanisms related to autonomy, wealth, and local cultural factors, which are said to underly the high prevalence of consanguineous marriage in Arab societies. It then assesses each of them empirically in two stages. The first uses a pooled dataset constituted by the most recent marriage cohorts in the 1992 and 2000 waves of the Egyptian Demographic and Health Surveys. Three results stand out. The frequency of consanguinity in the most recent marriage cohorts (i) is strongly correlated with the frequency among older cohorts, signaling the strong clustering of underlying institutional (and unobserved) supports; (ii) tends to be more common among women who are poorer in absolute term, though wealthier than average in their communities; and (iii) varies temporally and across the rural–urban divide in its relationship to women’s autonomy. A subsidiary analysis, using only the 2000 data, then identifies wealth and autonomy differences between first cousin patrilateral and matrilateral wives.     

Non-visual Obstacles in Reading Process

1.IntroductionEnglish reading has always been considered oneof the most important parts of foreign language learn-ing.However it has been observed that in China manyEFL learners are unable to read efficiently,and fre-quently fail to comprehend texts.What pitfalls,espe-cially non-visual ones exist?Only by attempting toovercome these obstacles in reading comprehension,can Chinese students achieve proficient reading.2.Reading is a decoding process based on in-teractive reading theoryChristine …     

Sexism in English and Chinese

Historicallyandsociologically, oursocietiesareman-orientedandman-centered. Women, regardedasaweakergenderinsociety, arediscriminatedinmanyrespects. Gender-differentiatedrolesinsocietyandfamilyarealmoststereotyped. Men'sdominanceo verwomenisatleastinpartconducivetothedisadvan tageofwomeninmanyoccupations, includingopportu nityofemploymentandjobpay. Eveninlinguisticre spect, languageuseisbias-basedandwomensufferlinguisticsexism. Thisaccentuateswomen'sdisadvan tageouspositioninsociety. Lingu…     

Hamilton Cycles in Cartesian Products

We give in this paper some sufficient conditons for cartesian productsG×K_3 to have two edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles,where G is a bridgelesscubic graph.We also prove that G×K_3 has a one-factorization if G has atwo-factor with at most six componet,which answers partially the ques-     

Four Skills Used in Communication

It is quite predictable that an English teacher may encounter frequently with the question "How can I learn English well?" The answer might be "Listen more, speak more, read more and write more." It is absolutely correct but it may seem empty and hollow to the person who asks the question.     

On Diction in Literary Translation

ＯｎＤｉｃｔｉｏｎｉｎＬｉｔｅｒａｒｙＴｒａｎｓｌａｔｉｏｎ￥ＺｈｏｕＺｈｉｊｉｅＴｒａｎｓｌａｔｉｏｎｃａｎｂｅｓｉｍｐｌｙｄｅｆｉｎｅｄａｓ＇ｔｈｅｒｅｐｌａｃｅｍｅｎｔｏｆｔｅｘｔｕａｌｍａｔｅｒｉａｌｉｎｏｎｅｌａｎｇｕａｇｅｂｙｅｑｕｉｖａ...     

Considerations in EFL Writing Teaching

I.SomecurrentproblemsinEFLwritingAlthoughEnglishwritingskillisassumedindispensableforse-niorsinEnglishmajor,itislackinginasolidfoundationwhichmustbelaidduringthejuniortime.Whencomparedwithsomeotherskills-teachingsuchaslistening,speakingandreading,writingap-proachesalwaysreceiveweakestemphasis,whichissuretocastdoubtonstudents’languageacquisitionallround.Accordingtomyquestionnaire,Ifoundthatmanystudentsconsiderwritingcoursetootheoreticalandunsatisfactoryaswell.Todealwiththeirteachers’assign…