Migration and the latino family: The union formation behavior of Puerto Rican women

This study examines the transition to first union among Puerto Rican women. I argue that understanding the behavior of mainland Puerto Ricans requires attention to family patterns in Puerto Rico and to the dynamics of migration between Puerto Rico and the United States. The study therefore is based on pooled data from comparable surveys undertaken in the two settings. These data allow for event history analyses that compare the union formation behavior of migrants with that of nonmigrants, and consider the role of migration in producing the observed union patterns. Multivariate models show that migrants are more likely than nonmigrants to form unions early and to enter informal unions. Additional analyses show that selective migration plays a role in producing this pattern. Overall the findings demonstrate the importance of using data from both origin and destination locales for understanding the behavior of migrant groups.     

Labor market structure and fertility differences among Puerto Rican women: The effects of economic and social policies on opportunity costs

The oft-observed inverse relationship between economic activity in the formal or informal sector and levels of fertility is attributed to the opportunity costs of reproduction. The economic and social policies that initiate and maintain the substantial flow of federal transfer payments to the Puerto Rican population is likely to reduce the opportunity costs among women participating in the informal economy; therefore, informal labor market participants will have fertility levels more like women who have never worked than like women active in the formal labor market. Using data from the 1982 Puerto Rican Fertility and Family Planning Assessment, this paper compares fertility differentials among ever-married women who have never worked, who have ever worked in the informal economy, and who have only worked in the formal economy. Contrary to expectations, the fertility levels of informal labor market participants are more like those of formal labor market participants; economic activity in either sector is associated with bearing fewer children. Federal transfer payments do not appear to reduce the opportunity costs of reproduction among women employed in the informal economy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 meeting of the Population Association of America.     

Dissolution of first unions in Colombia,Panama, and Peru

An analysis of marital histories from World Fertility Survey data in Colombia, Panama, and Peru indicates a high level of union dissolution: the probabilities of a first union ending by separation within twenty years of the onset of union equal .27, .40, and .18 in the three countries respectively. Dissolution probabilities are especially high among women with young ages at first union and among women residing in urban areas. For all subgroups studied, consensual unions are characterized by several times the risk of separation of legal marriages. Consensual unions are especially frequent among women in rural areas, women with little education and women who enter unions at young ages. The different prevalence of consensual unions among the different subgroups affects the associations between union stability and various correlates so that it becomes essential to investigate the factors affecting union stability for both consensual unions and legal marriages. In spite of high dissolution rates, remarriage rates in all three countries are also high, as are the percentages of time spent in a union. Hence, the potential effects of voluntary disruption of unions on fertility appear to be modest.     

Migration and premarital childbearing among Puerto Rican women

This paper examines the relationship between migration and premarital childbearing in a highly migratory Latino subgroup, Puerto Rican women. Using pooled origin-destination data from surveys conducted in Puerto Rico and in the New York metropolitan area, we find that first- and second-generation migrants to the u.s. mainland face substantially higher risks of conceiving and bearing a first child before marriage than do nonmigrants in Puerto Rico. This pattern is due largely to the relatively early transition to sexual activity among mainland women. Given the negative long-term consequences of premarital childbearing for women and their children, our findings call into question the assumption that migrants necessarily experience only positive outcomes as a result of the assimilation process.     

Union Instability as an Engine of Fertility? A Microsimulation Model for France

Opportunities for conceiving and bearing children are fewer when unions are not formed or are dissolved during the childbearing years. At the same time, union instability produces a pool of persons who may enter new partnerships and have additional children in stepfamilies. The balance between these two opposing forces and their implications for fertility may depend on the timing of union formation and parenthood. In this article, we estimate models of childbearing, union formation, and union dissolution for female respondents to the 1999 French Etude de l’Histoire Familiale. Model parameters are applied in microsimulations of completed family size. We find that a population of women whose first unions dissolve during the childbearing years will end up with smaller families, on average, than a population in which all unions remain intact. Because new partnerships encourage higher parity progressions, repartnering minimizes the fertility gap between populations with and those without union dissolution. Differences between the two populations are much smaller when family formation is postponed—that is, when union formation and dissolution or first birth occurs after age 30, or when couples delay childbearing after union formation.     

Changes in Cohabitation After the Birth of the First Child in Chile

In Chile, as in other Latin American countries, most children born outside of marriage are born to currently cohabiting couples. After having their first child, parents could marry, separate, or experience no change in union status. This paper explores changes in cohabitation that occur after the birth of the first child in Chile and analyzes how these changes might be associated with the birth of children and socioeconomic status. The data come from the New Chilean Family Survey, a small longitudinal survey administered to women after giving birth (n = 564). I use life tables and event history techniques to assess changes in respondent union status up to 4 years after the birth of the first child, and to study the transitions out of cohabitation. The results indicate that the unions in the sample are relatively stable, because less than 40 percent of cohabiters change status over the period of 4 years. However, marriage still appears to be a more stable type of union than cohabitation. Among cohabiters, there is evidence of a nonlinear relation between union stability and educational attainment, because the most stable unions are the unions of women with a high school diploma and not the unions of women who did not complete their secondary education. Having planned the first birth and the birth of an additional child seems to consolidate the cohabiting union, because these variables are not related to the entry into marriage, but they are related to lower risks of dissolution. These findings suggest that the Chilean case differs from the cases of Europe and the United States.     

Entry into Consensual Unions and Marriages Among Finnish Women Born Between 1938 and 1967

This study, based on a survey undertaken in 1989, clearly illustrates the dramatic changes in family formation behaviour that have occurred in Finland. Whereas only about one-tenth of the first unions of women born between 1938 and 1942 began as consensual unions, after the cohort of 1962 only one-tenth were formal marriages. These changes lagged some ten years behind the corresponding ones in Sweden, but were about five years ahead of Norway. In Finland, up to the present, most consensual unions have constituted a temporary state which precedes proper family life. Most couples married in connection with the birth of the first child. Consensual union as a permanent lifestyle is generally connected with a low level of education of women.     

Changes in union status during the transition to parenthood in eleven European countries, 1970s to early 2000s

Couples who have children are increasingly likely to have lived together without being married at some point in their relationship. Some couples begin their unions with cohabitation and marry before first conception, some marry during pregnancy or directly after the first birth, while others remain unmarried 3 years after the first birth. Using union and fertility histories since the 1970s for eleven countries, we examine whether women who have children in unions marry, and if so, at what stage in family formation. We also examine whether women who conceive when cohabiting are more likely to marry or separate. We find that patterns of union formation and childbearing develop along different trajectories across countries. In all countries, however, less than 40 per cent of women remained in cohabitation up to 3 years after the first birth, suggesting that marriage remains the predominant institution for raising children.     

Childhood disadvantages and the timing of the onset of natural menopause in Latin America and the Caribbean

The aim of this study is to investigate the association of early life factors with the timing of the onset of natural menopause in Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. We use Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the risk of the onset of menopause. Our results suggest that socioeconomic disadvantages, as expressed by difficulties attending school due to economic hardships or parents never living together, increase the risk of the onset of natural menopause among Puerto Rican women. Among Costa Rican women, early life nutrition, estimated using anthropometric measures, is related to the timing of the onset of natural menopause.     

Is Stepfamily Status Associated With Cohabiting and Married Women’s Fertility Behaviors?

Children from prior relationships potentially complicate fertility decision-making in new cohabitations and marriages. On the one hand, the “value of children” perspective suggests that unions with and without stepchildren have similar—and deliberate—reasons for shared childbearing. On the other hand, multipartnered fertility (MPF) research suggests that childbearing across partnerships is often unintended. Using the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth and event-history models, I examine the role of stepfamily status on cohabiting and married women’s fertility and birth intendedness, with attention to union type and stepfamily configuration. Adjusting for covariates, women in stepfamily unions are more likely to have a first shared birth in a union than women in unions in which neither partner has children from past relationships, but stepfamily births are less likely to be intended than unintended. Further, this association varies by union type: married women have similar birth risks across stepfamily status, but births are less likely to be intended in marital stepfamilies. For cohabitors, women in a stepfamily are more likely to have a birth than women in nonstepfamily unions, with no differences in intendedness. Configuration (whose children and how many) also matters; for instance, women with one child from a past relationship are more likely to have a birth and to have an intended than unintended birth than women with other stepfamily configurations. It appears that children from either partner’s prior relationships influences subsequent fertility decision-making, undermining the utility of the “value of children” perspective for explaining childbearing behaviors in complex families.     

Premature Birth and Asthma Among Young Puerto Rican Children

Puerto Rican children are more likely to have asthma than children in any other racial/ethnic group in the United States, yet little research has examined the factors contributing to childhood asthma among Puerto Ricans. Using data from a representative sample of mainland Puerto Rican children, the present study investigates the relationship between preterm birth and early-childhood asthma (i.e., in the first years of life). The roles of other risk factors (i.e., socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, environmental conditions, and maternal health behavior) in the development of asthma in early childhood also are considered. The analysis reveals a relatively high rate of asthma for preterm children as well as differences between term and preterm children in the risk factors for early-childhood asthma. Measures of socioeconomic status and the cleanliness of the home environment are related to asthma for term, but not preterm, children; in contrast, demographic characteristics and maternal health behavior are important risk factors for asthma among preterm children.     

“The decline of the size of the domestic group in England”

This paper examines the relationship between the number of partnerships ever engaged in and fertility, as measured by the average number of live births. It was found that the larger the number of partnerships in which a woman had been engaged the higher is her fertility. This relationship between partnerships and fertility remains even when such variables as present age, age at first partnership, age at first pregnancy, time lost between unions, time spent in partnerships, time since entry into the first partnership, type of sexual union at first pregnancy, present type of sexual union, and current use or non-use of contraceptives are controlled by cross tabulation. Correlation analysis also bears out the positive relationship between partnerships and fertility. The data for this study came from a sample survey of 4,199 women of lower, and lower middle, socio-economic status who were interviewed in 1971 on the island of Barbados. The authors have confidence in the reliability and validity of their data and hence in their findings and conclusions.

The authors believe that their findings contradict the previously established positive relationship between patterns of stability of sexual unions and fertility in English-speaking Caribbean societies. They conclude that the relationship was either not rigorously examined in the past or else has undergone changes as these societies modernize economically and socially.     

Fertility and number of partnerships in Barbados

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between the number of partnerships ever engaged in and fertility, as measured by the average number of live births. It was found that the larger the number of partnerships in which a woman had been engaged the higher is her fertility. This relationship between partnerships and fertility remains even when such variables as present age, age at first partnership, age at first pregnancy, time lost between unions, time spent in partnerships, time since entry into the first partnership, type of sexual union at first pregnancy, present type of sexual union, and current use or non-use of contraceptives are controlled by cross tabulation. Correlation analysis also bears out the positive relationship between partnerships and fertility. The data for this study came from a sample survey of 4,199 women of lower, and lower middle, socio-economic status who were interviewed in 1971 on the island of Barbados. The authors have confidence in the reliability and validity of their data and hence in their findings and conclusions. The authors believe that their findings contradict the previously established positive relationship between patterns of stability of sexual unions and fertility in English-speaking Caribbean societies. They conclude that the relationship was either not rigorously examined in the past or else has undergone changes as these societies modernize economically and socially.     

Using surname data in U.S. Puerto Rican mortality analysis

Evidence suggests that among mainland-born decedents. Hispanic (particularly Puerto Rican) origin may have been underreported in states that have added an ancestry item to their death certificates. This study uses the 1980 Census Bureau Spanish-surname list to code surnames on New York City death certificates. By examining the correspondence between surname type and the response to the ancestry item, we identify potential underreporting of Hispanic ethnicity for Spanish-surnamed decedents. A surname-based method then is used to adjust mortality data for mainland-born Puerto Rican decedents.     

The role of sterilization in controlling Puerto Rican fertility

Abstract This paper provides evidence that the prevalence of female sterilization in Puerto Rica has increased substantially in recent years. It is estimated that about one-third of all Puerto Rican mothers aged 20 to 49 in 1965 were sterilized. This estimate is based on data from an island-wide survey in 1965 (Master Sample Survey of Health and Welfare). Additional data from this and other sources are analysed, leading to the conclusion that sterilization, rather than any other means of fertility control, was largely responsible for the decline in Puerto Rican fertility since 1950.     

The labor supply of Latinas in the USA: Comparing labor force participation, wages, and hours worked with Anglo and Black women

This study explores the determinants of labor supply patterns among Latinas in the USA. We use recent microeconomic data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics/Latino National Political Survey (PSID-LNPS) to estimate models of labor force participation, wages, and hours worked for a sample of Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican women. We estimate the same models for Anglo and Black women in order to explore ethnic differences in the impact of characteristics affecting both the reservation and the market wage. We find that differences exist in the return to characteristics, such as education, but that there are also substantial differences in the levels of those characteristics across ethnic groups. The low wage rates and labor market activity of Latinas relative to Anglo and Black women are thus likely to be the combined result of lower investments in human capital and larger family size, the greater negative impact of macroeconomic conditions, and a stronger responsiveness to wages. Among Latinas, we find that there are differences in labor market outcomes between national origin and nativity groups. We also find that age at arrival and years in the USA play a role in labor supply, and that this is particularly true for Puerto Rican women.     

Sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican young adults

Sexual prejudice is linked to hate crimes, mental health, risk behaviors, and stigma. Few studies have examined sexual prejudice among Latinos. We surveyed 382 college students in Puerto Rico. A structural model tested whether contact and positive experiences with homosexuals, perceived similarities with peers' attitudes toward homosexuality, and religiosity were predictive of sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican young adults. Sex differences in the structural model were explored. With the exception of peers' attitudes toward homosexuality, all study variables predict sexual prejudice. No sex differences were found. Implications for decreasing sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican youth in a college setting are discussed.     

Determinants of Long-Term Unions: Who Survives the “Seven Year Itch”?

Most studies of union formation focus on short-term probabilities of marrying, cohabiting, or divorcing in the next year. In this study, we take a long-term perspective by considering joint probabilities of marrying or cohabiting by certain ages and maintaining the unions for at least 8, 12, or even 24 years. We use data for female respondents in the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate choice models for multiple stages of the union-forming process. We then use the estimated parameters to simulate each woman’s sequence of union transitions from ages 18–46, and use the simulated outcomes to predict probabilities that women with given characteristics follow a variety of long-term paths. We find that a typical, 18 year-old woman with no prior unions has a 22 % chance of cohabiting or marrying within 4 years and maintaining the union for 12+ years; this predicted probability remains steady until the woman nears age 30, when it falls to 17 %. We also find that unions entered via cohabitation contribute significantly to the likelihood of experiencing a long-term union, and that this contribution grows with age and (with age held constant) as women move from first to second unions. This finding reflects the fact that the high probability of entering a cohabiting union more than offsets the relatively low probability of maintaining it for the long-term. Third, the likelihood of forming a union and maintaining it for the long-term is highly sensitive to race, but is largely invariant to factors that can be manipulated by public policy such as divorce laws, welfare benefits, and income tax laws.     

Sexual Prejudice Among Puerto Rican Young Adults

Abstract

Sexual prejudice is linked to hate crimes, mental health, risk behaviors, and stigma. Few studies have examined sexual prejudice among Latinos. We surveyed 382 college students in Puerto Rico. A structural model tested whether contact and positive experiences with homosexuals, perceived similarities with peers' attitudes toward homosexuality, and religiosity were predictive of sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican young adults. Sex differences in the structural model were explored. With the exception of peers' attitudes toward homosexuality, all study variables predict sexual prejudice. No sex differences were found. Implications for decreasing sexual prejudice among Puerto Rican youth in a college setting are discussed.     

A gross mating table for a West Indian population

At a sample survey carried out in Trinidad in 1958 data were collected on the participation of women in three union types: “visiting”, “common law” and “married”. It is assumed that the maximum number of changes of union type in which a woman is involved is three. From the survey material the chances of non-East Indian women moving from one type of union to another as they pass through the childbearing span (taken here as 14 to 45) are calculated. These chances are used to construct a table showing the types of unions in which a cohort of 10,000 women are involved between the ages of 14 and 45.

This table makes possible the estimation of the length of time spent by the average woman in the three union types as well as the time spent in the “single” state, the numbers of women participating in these union types at different ages and the stability of these types of union.

This table emphasizes that despite the fact that the “visiting” type is very important at lower ages, there is a progressive concentration in “married” and “common law” types with advance in age, and by age 45 more than half the women are “married” and about one-fifth are in “common law” associations. It also shows that the average woman spends the longest period of childbearing life in the “married” state (9.6 years), the shortest time in “visiting” unions (4.1 years) and 5.9 years in “common law” unions. Stability is strongest in the case of the “married” type and lowest for the “visiting”; this, however, may be viewed not so much as evidence of family disorganisation, but as a progressive shift from a less stable to a more stable union type.