Child care arrangements and fertility: An analysis of two-earner households

The determinants of child care arrangements and relations between child care and fertility are examined using data on two-earner households from the 1976 National Survey of Family Growth. We find that the probability of relying on market arrangements is higher among families in which the husband's income, the wife's wage, and the level of the wife's labor supply are high; these households are likely to benefit the most from subsidies to the market forms of care that are small relative to the total cost of care (e.g. the present system of tax credits). In addition, parental education, family size, child's age, race, religion, and place of residence have important influences on the choice of child care mode. When other factors are held constant, reliance on a relative for child care is positively associated with intentions to have further children among couples with infants and preschoolers.     

Gendered Racism on the Body: An Intersectional Approach to Maternal Mortality in the United States

Population Research and Policy Review - Scholars recognize sex and race as social determinants of health. However, demography research often ignores their derivatives (racism and sexism) and their...     

The Settlement Country and Ethnic Identification of Children of Turkish Immigrants in Germany,France, and the Netherlands: What Role Do National Integration Policies Play?

Germany, France, and the Netherlands have pursued different types of integration policies. Using data from a mixed method study, this paper investigates whether and how these differences have affected the settlement country and ethnic identification of the children of Turkish immigrants. The results indicate that integration policies do not affect ethnic identification, but an inclusive policy has a positive impact on settlement country identification. Multicultural policies do not seem to have any effect. Despite processes of exclusion and self‐exclusion in all three countries, our respondents have developed a strong connection to their settlement country and in particular to their place of residence.     

Return migration predictors for undocumented Mexican immigrants living in Dallas

This study uses a survey of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in Dallas to identify variables that predict the likelihood of return migration of undocumented Mexican immigrants. Male immigrants and immigrants under age 25 are more likely to intend to return to Mexico. Surprisingly, length of US residence is not a significant predictor of intended return. In contrast, prior immigrant experience is a significant predictor of intent to return to Mexico. Highly educated immigrants are likely to intend to return to Mexico, probably because the relative skill benefit is greater in the origin country. Immigrants from the Mexican state of Guanajuato are likely to intend to return to Mexico, while those from San Luis Potosi are likely to intend to remain in the US. Immigrants who own a home in Dallas are likely to remain in the US, while those who own land in Mexico are likely to return to Mexico.     

Spectral density-based and measure-preserving ABC for partially observed diffusion processes. An illustration on Hamiltonian SDEs

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) has become one of the major tools of likelihood-free statistical inference in complex mathematical models. Simultaneously, stochastic differential equations (SDEs) have developed to an established tool for modelling time-dependent, real-world phenomena with underlying random effects. When applying ABC to stochastic models, two major difficulties arise: First, the derivation of effective summary statistics and proper distances is particularly challenging, since simulations from the stochastic process under the same parameter configuration result in different trajectories. Second, exact simulation schemes to generate trajectories from the stochastic model are rarely available, requiring the derivation of suitable numerical methods for the synthetic data generation. To obtain summaries that are less sensitive to the intrinsic stochasticity of the model, we propose to build up the statistical method (e.g. the choice of the summary statistics) on the underlying structural properties of the model. Here, we focus on the existence of an invariant measure and we map the data to their estimated invariant density and invariant spectral density. Then, to ensure that these model properties are kept in the synthetic data generation, we adopt measure-preserving numerical splitting schemes. The derived property-based and measure-preserving ABC method is illustrated on the broad class of partially observed Hamiltonian type SDEs, both with simulated data and with real electroencephalography data. The derived summaries are particularly robust to the model simulation, and this fact, combined with the proposed reliable numerical scheme, yields accurate ABC inference. In contrast, the inference returned using standard numerical methods (Euler–Maruyama discretisation) fails. The proposed ingredients can be incorporated into any type of ABC algorithm and directly applied to all SDEs that are characterised by an invariant distribution and for which a measure-preserving numerical method can be derived.

     

Determinants of child care mode choice: An economic perspective

The author presents evidence indicating that economic and demographic variables are important determinants of the type of child care used by two-earner households. Three conclusions follow from the empirical analysis: (a) Projections for future child care needs could be considerably impoved if, rather than taking into account only the number of children under 6, as done presently, more detailed age categories were considered, as well as trends in male and female wages and labor supply. (b) Subsidies to the formal modes of care may have antinatalist consequences. (c) Unless income tests are used, the benefits from such subsidies are likely to be heavily concentrated in the high-income groups.     

Conditions determining the local stability of populations

The conditions that determine the local stability classification of an equilibrium population configuration are analyzed. The population investigated is age‐structured and density‐dependent, where density is determined by an age‐weighted population size. Two demographic parameters are introduced: the marginal birth rate and marginal death rate, which describe the marginal density‐dependence of the birth and death rates of the equilibrium population. Certain necessary and/or sufficient conditions determining stability are developed, most of them involving the net reproduction rate of the population, and examples illustrating these conditions are presented.