Statistical materials. Results of the 1985 socio-demographic sample survey of the population

Results from the five percent socio-demographic sample survey of the USSR conducted in 1985 are presented. Data are provided on the educational status of the population and the labor force by nationality, republic, sex, and rural or urban area; income; marital status; marriage duration; divorce and separation; intervals between marriages; family size; family characteristics; families with children under 18; internal migration; and distribution of women by number of children ever born, republic, nationality, educational status, and expected family size     

Women and children in the USSR

Selected official data for 1986 and 1987 concerning women and children in the USSR are presented. The data include number of women by Union republic for selected years, 1939-1987; age distribution; elected and appointed officials; labor force participation; educational status; and occupations.     

Women in the USSR

This is a selection of statistical data on women from the 1989 Soviet census. The data include total female population by republic; rural and urban female population; women's age distribution, income, labor force participation, educational status, and life expectancy; marriage and divorce; birth weight of children born to unmarried women; induced abortion; maternal mortality; and infant mortality.     

Women in the USSR

This is a selection of statistical data on women in the USSR; it covers the period 1970-1989. Tabular data are provided on the number of women by Union republic; the number of women and men by age group and rural or urban area; women's educational levels, sources of income, and occupations; family size for the whole country and for rural and urban areas; women's marital status by age; marriages and divorces; divorce by women's education, age, and number of children; birth rate by Union republic and by nationality; abortion and childbirth for selected years and by Union republic; maternal deaths by Union republic; infant deaths; and female life expectancy.     

All-Union population census: number of children born

Data from the 1979 census for the USSR and Union Republics are provided on the distribution of women by number of children, educational attainment, and nationality and the distribution of married women by number of children.     

career story: The importance of being ERNIE

ERNIE is the Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment that caused huge interest in 1957 when it began selecting prize-winners for the new Premium Bonds, the first government-sponsored gamble in Britain in modern times. Stephanie Shirley was a young statistician working on ERNIE. Today, as Steve Shirley or Dame Stephanie , she is one of the wealthiest women in Britain—not through winning on Premium Bonds herself, but through the pioneering software company she formed which, for the first time, gave female-friendly employment to women programmers (and statisticians) who had children and dependants at home to care for. She is now a major philanthropist and a driving force for research into the social effects of the Internet and into autism. She has given more than £50 million to charities in those fields. Julian Champkin interviews her.     

Births outside of marriage

The characteristics of the five percent of women who have children outside of marriage in Poland are analyzed, as well as the characteristics of their children. Data are from official sources.     

Motivation with regard to attitudes toward procreation among married women

The results of a sample survey on attitudes toward reproduction in Poland are presented in this two-part article. The survey, which was conducted by the Central Statistical Office in 1977, covered 9,799 women up to age 45. The women surveyed are divided into three main groups, consisting of those with positive, conditional, and negative attitudes toward having more children. The attitudes and characteristics of the women are analyzed.     

Ehrenberg law-like relationship and anthropometry

Summary. Ehrenberg presented the simple law-like relationship log( w )=0.8 h  + 0.4 ± 0.04 between the weight and height of children aged 5–13 years. Several researchers have confirmed that this relationship holds, irrespective of the child's ethnic, racial, gender and social class. In anthropometry, a weight–height relationship is used to measure the nutritional status of children. For this purpose, the World Health Organization have adopted the National Center for Health Statistics population as the international reference population. The relationship between the World Health Organization–National Center for Health Statistics anthropometric standards and Ehrenberg law-like relationship is examined. Differences between the weight-for-height relationship in anthropometry and the law-like relationship between weight and height for children are small and can be attributable to functional differences. It is found that an Ehrenberg law-like relationship can be extended to include children who are under 5 years old. Criteria for using the law-like relationship to assess the nutritional status of these children are thus suggested. The criteria are evaluated using anthropometric data of a sample of 513 children from a rural district of Botswana. The results indicate that the proposed method of using the law-like relationship to assess nutritional status is much simpler and at least as reliable as the existing methods in anthropometry.     

提高女性家庭地位的心理途径：自我认同的例子

本文使用2010年全国妇女社会地位调查数据,研究作为重要心理特质的自我认同对女性家庭地位的影响。无论是在全样本,还是在按照民族、城乡和地区划分的分样本中,有序Logit模型回归结果表明,自我认同对女性家庭内部议价能力产生积极影响。分别使用倾向得分匹配和条件混合过程处理自我认同的选择性偏差和内生性问题,结果也显示自我认同增强了女性家庭内部议价能力。本文的创新之处体现在如下两个方面:一方面,这是少有的从自我认同角度解释女性家庭地位的文章。本文将女性非认知能力纳入到家庭行为的新尝试为整个经济学科的交叉研究开启了新思路,为女性一直追求的性别平等和个人发展提供了新路径。另一方面,本文关于女性家庭地位与自我认同的实证结论,能够扩展延伸到其他与中国文化背景相似的地方,从而能为那些“女性处于不利地位”的国家和地区提供重要政策启示。总体而言,本文为行为经济学领域增加了新发现,为自我认同对女性家庭地位的因果关系提供了进一步证据。     

FAMILY BUILDING DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SAME SEX AND MIXED SEX FAMILIES IN AUSTRALIA

From this investigation it seems that an aversion among some couples to a same sex family has some relevance in family building. However, although there are significant differences in the proportions of same sex and mixed sex families having an additional child, the overall effect on average family size of the (apparent) attempt to achieve a child of each sex appears to be slight—an increase of less than 3% in the case of the Melbourne data. Despite the evidence that a significantly greater proportion of women with same sex families have another child, relatively few women admit that the sex structure of the children was the main factor in such a decision. Another insight into the relationship between sex structure and family building was that the desire for a child of each sex may have a negative effect on fertility in that couples who have already achieved such a configuration may decide not to have an additional child that they had originally planned to have. Obviously, it is difficult to separate attitudes to the importance of having both sons and daughters from rationalisations associated with the sex structure of the respondent's own family. Nevertheless the desire for children of each sex seems to be related to traditional attitudes to woman's role, Southern European background, an earlier year of birth, and a lower level of education. However, at the same time women in these categories, particularly the last, seem to be relatively less likely to exhibit behaviour indicative of a controlled response to the sex structure of the family; thus among such groups the probability of same sex families having another child is found to be relatively similar to the proportion of mixed sex families having another child. In other words, they are less likely than other women, who care less about having both sons and daughters, to stop at two (or three) children when at least one son and one daughter have been attained. What of the future relationship between proportions of same sex and mixed sex families having another child? Although it would seem that the combined effect of better educational opportunities and less traditional attitudes of each new generation would further reduce the importance attached to having both sons and daughters, at the same time one would expect an increase in a couple's ability to stop family building when two or three children of the desired sex structure had been achieved. Another factor is that possibly an increasing preference for smaller families will outweigh the wish to have a third (or fourth) child to achieve one child of each sex or for any other reason.     

Education of women and changes in the family model in Poland

Trends in women's education in Poland for the period 1960-1986 are reviewed, with a focus on the status of women and the allocation of women's time. The author concludes that the rapid changes in women's educational status that have occurred are not matched by equally rapid changes in family behavior.     

Births in remarriages (using data from sample surveys)

Data from sample surveys conducted between 1978 and 1981 are used to examine the fertility of women in second and subsequent marriages in the USSR. The results indicate that women up to age 25 who have been married more than once have higher fertility than women in a first marriage. However, total fertility is higher for women in uninterrupted marriages. The analysis is presented separately for various cohorts and for socioeconomic characteristics such as educational status and rural or urban residence.     

The dynamics and differentials of fertility in the USSR (survey results)

The results of a fertility survey carried out in the USSR in 1978 are presented. The survey included 33,076 women aged 18 to 59. Data are included on fertility rates by region and Union Republic and by urban or rural area, and on expected fertility of women aged 18 to 44. Changes in actual and desired fertility over time are compared for five-year periods from 1945 to 1978. Differences in fertility are analyzed by type of settlement, educational status, and nationality.     

Misclassification of current status data

We describe a simple method for nonparametric estimation of a distribution function based on current status data where observations of current status information are subject to misclassification. Nonparametric maximum likelihood techniques lead to use of a straightforward set of adjustments to the familiar pool-adjacent-violators estimator used when misclassification is assumed absent. The methods consider alternative misclassification models and are extended to regression models for the underlying survival time. The ideas are motivated by and applied to an example on human papilloma virus (HPV) infection status of a sample of women examined in San Francisco.     

The econometrics of female labor supply and children

This is a survey of applied econometric research on the effects of children on female labor supply. Reasons for interest in the topic, and a basic model and terminology, are reviewed. Concerns are raised about the possible endogeneity of child status variables, and about the instrumental variables approach for dealing with this problem. Alternative ways of conceptualizing and estimating child status effects are considered, together with selected empirical evidence. Relevant developments from the household demand literature are summarized. Basic issues of model choice are also discussed.     

照护还是医疗:老年人健康支出的产出效率比较

老龄化尤其是高龄失能老人增多对我国现有的以疾病治疗为核心的健康保障体系提出了挑战。本文基于CLHLS2011年数据的结构方程模型估计结果表明,家庭的照料护理支出显著提高了老人的健康自评、健康他评、生活满意度等生活质量指标,并且还能降低老人的小病发病率、患慢性病种类数以及两年内的患重病次数;而家庭的医疗费用支出则显著降低了老人对自身健康水平和生活状况的主观评价,对降低老人患小病、重病和慢性病等也没有贡献。相比医疗支出,照护支出具有更优的健康产出效率,并且通过增进老人的身体功能和生活自理能力、提高老人主观健康评价等途径起到更积极的健康促进作用。最后建议我国应将更多的健康支出用于照料护理,建立基于家庭和社区的老人照护体系。     

Main results of the socio-demographic survey of the population of the USSR conducted in 1985

Selected results of a socio-demographic survey conducted in the USSR in 1985 are presented. The survey covered approximately 13 million people. Topics considered include family size, assistance to mothers of young children, birth rates, age at marriage, educational status, income, and internal migration.     

Birth control in rural areas

Contraception in the rural areas of Poland is analyzed using data from a survey of 3,171 women. The survey was carried out in 1990. Information is provided on the choice of method, the age of contraceptive users, and the number of children women have before they begin to use contraception. The study also examines attitudes toward abortion.     

Multistate survival models for transitions and reverse transitions: an application to contraceptive use data

This paper extends the use of the multistate proportional hazards model proposed by R. Kay for transitions, reverse transitions, and repeated transitions. A simple method of testing the equality of vectors of parameters for transitions and repeated transitions is also shown in addition to estimates for the underlying cumulative hazards for different types of transition. The multistate survival models applied to contraceptive use data collected by the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, for the period January 1978 to December 1982 provide useful findings relating to interstate transitions. The author stresses the need to not treat separately states of contraceptive use given their link to the acceptance of the first method, transitions from one method to another, first method discontinuation, periods of non-use, the use of subsequent methods, loss to follow-up, the use of irreversible methods, and subsequent periods of non-use. Religion is an important indicator for the acceptance of an irreversible method as a first or subsequent method; compared to women of other religions, Muslims were less likely to accept an irreversible method as a first or subsequent method. Religion is not, however, associated with the acceptance or subsequent use of a reversible method or with discontinuation of a reversible method. Higher age in the study area is associated with both lower acceptance and longer continuation of a method. Women with a larger number of living sons tend to accept their first method and subsequent methods at an higher rate than women with fewer or no sons. As for educational status, women with higher education proved to be serious users of contraception, although women with less or no education tend to accept an irreversible method at an higher rate than the women with an higher level of education. Further, the desire for more children is a strong predictor for non-use of a method even if contraception is used to space births. The score test suggested in the paper for testing the equality of parameters in models 1-4 reveals that there is no significant difference in the parameters of the models. This paper shows that the factors which affect the acceptance of any reversible method of contraception are different from those for an irreversible method. Moreover, the factors which affect a transition differ from those for a reverse transition in the case of adopting reversible methods.