The concept of spatial order and other problems of regional research in demography

The concept of spatial demographic order is introduced and defined as the preferred spatial distribution of a given demographic variable. The results of a multivariate statistical analysis of demographic trends in rural and urban areas in Poland are presented to illustrate the convergence of such trends in the areas studied. The author concludes that the increasing similarity in demographic processes between rural and urban areas is due mainly to migration.     

Age patterns of marital fertility: revising the Coale-Trussell method

"This article revises the Coale-Trussell method for analyzing data from the World Fertility Survey by proposing and testing alternative log-linear and log-multiplicative models. The models, in one form or another, represent the structural constraint underlying the Coale-Trussell method on the variation in the age pattern of human fertility. With a Poisson distribution assumption for the number of births, several parameters of the models are simultaneously estimated via maximum likelihood. It is shown that the new approach can be adopted whenever fertility limitation is compared across multiple populations or subpopulations."     

The utilitarian criterion,finite sensibility,and the weak majority preference principle

This study is a further analysis of the approach taken by Yew-Kwang Ng to derive the utilitarian criterion. Specific for the model is that individual preferences are finitely sensible. In this framweork an analysis of the consequences on social preferences when different kinds of value premises are imposed is made. It is found that the utilitarian criterion is the unique consequence only for very special choices of the value premise. In addition, uniqueness requires the underlying preferences be cardinal. It is also found that finite sensibility induces approximate cardinalization of preferences.I am grateful to Y.-K. Ng, two anonymous referees and an editor of this journal for helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper. The research was financially supported by the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences     

A survey of the family planning work done in Dongguan County

The total fertility rate of women of childbearing age of Dongguan County in China has been decreasing gradually from 5.9 during the period following the liberation in 1949 to 2.05 in 1982. In order to encourage young couples to implement the policy of family planning consciously, the people's government of Dongguan county decided in July 1980 that all cadres and employees in county towns who received 1-child certificates would be exempted from house rent of 45 square meters from the time they get their certificates and would be allocated a living space of a 2-children family until their children reached age 16. It also stipulated that every couple could enjoy 1 month's holiday every year for 3 years and during the holiday, their salary, bonus and rate of attendance would not be affected. Because women bear less children today, they are relieved from heavy household chores and become the main working force in collective production. As a result, the development of town-run enterprises was stimulated and the total industrial output value of these enterprises increased. The average monthly salary of each female worker is about 100 yuan. In 1984, the average income per capita of the country rose to 649.2 yuan. The implementation of family planning work has eased the tension in the education field. Previously, because of the large number of school-age children in rural areas, teachers had to teach 2 classes. In the past 4 years, great emphasis was laid on intellectual investment. During this period, 2351 schools were built and several fundraising projects were implemented. Since 1981, more than 200 new running water projects were built, and new public services have been developed, including old age homes.     

Late fertility decline in the Netherlands: The influence of religious denomination,socioeconomic group and region

Both published results from the 1930, 1947, 1960 and 1971 censuses and unpublished ones are used to examine the influence that religious denomination, socio-economic group and region exerted on the fertility of marriages contracted between 1876 and 1959. A theory formulated by Lesthaeghe and Wilson on the relation between modes of production and secularization and the pace of fertility decline in Western Europe offers — in combination with van Heek's views on the special position of Dutch Roman Catholicism — a starting point for an explanation of why the fertility decline of Roman Catholics, self-employed and agricultural labourers lagged behind.     

Individual behavior under risk and under uncertainty: An experimental study

These experiments are concerned with individual behavior under risk and under uncertainty. By exploiting the isolation effect the experiments were able to offer to 134 subjects the possibility of actually gaining or losing an important sum of money.The experimental data show that under risk as well as under complete ignorance the subjects' attitudes towards prospects of gains and towards prospects of losses are totally unrelated.The data also show that when facing prospects of gains, the subjects generally take the exact probabilities of the events into account, whereas, when facing prospects of losses many of then have only recourse to coarser categories of plausibility, or even no longer use their information at all.     

EXPERIMENTS WITH THE MIDDLE RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE IN SURVEY QUESTIONS

A series of experiments shows (1) that people are significantlymore likely to select the middle response alternative on anissue when it is explicitly offered to them as part of the questionthan when it is omitted; (2) that merely mentioning that thereis a middle alternative, in the preface to the question, makesit more likely that respondents will select it, even thoughit is not offered to them as an explicit choice; (3) that theorder in which the middle alternative is presented in the question—inthe middle or last position—can make a significant differencein the results, but that a "recency bias" does not occur invariably,or consistently; and (4) that people who select a middle responsealternative when it is offered would not necessarily answerthe question in the same way as other respondents if forcedto choose sides on the issue.     

Maternity and child health care in urban China

In China the effort to develop maternal and child health (MCH) care has been ongoing. Initially, attention was directed primarily to promulgating a modern method of delivery in an effort neonatal tetanus and puerperal fever. The next stage was the systematic management of MCH care. Pregnant women and puerperants were given a series of checkups and guidance from conception until the 42nd day after delivery. The purpose was to prevent and treat complications. In some cities, perinatal care has developed to the point of health care management of the health of both mother and child. This extensive health care system includes preconception and pregnancy care, puerperant care, and neonatal care. Premarital checks have become the rule in the urban areas. MCH care organizations at the grassroots level and community health workers take responsibility for advising newly married couples about health care. In addition, some medical colleges and their affiliated hospitals provide consultation services for these couples. The Shanghai Railway Medical College uses a computer to make projections on multigenic genetic diseases. It provides information on incidence risk of the next generation to help couples make their childbearing decisions. The majority of pregnant women get their 1st prenatal check prior to the 12th week of pregnancy, followed by 9 re-examinations to screen out high risk factors. Difficult labor, infections, obstetric trauma, postpartum hemorrhage, and fetal distress are prevented at childbirth. Newborns are scored with Apgar comments; those with low marks are specially protected. In some cities, an investigation system has been established to deal with perinatal deaths. Perinatal care is managed at 3 levels: community MCH centers and MCH departments of hospitals, clinics, and industrial enterprises form the 1st level of care; MCH centers of city districts and hospitals at the district level make up the 2nd level of care; and MCH institutes or hospitals at provincial or city levels, hospitals attached to medical colleges, and hospitals under government ministries form the 3rd level of care.     

Customer knowledge sharing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions: The role of customer motivation and promise management

Knowledge is a vital source of competitive advantage and renewal for contemporary organizations. However, to date, few studies have scrutinized how mergers and acquisitions (M&As)—processes dependent on knowledge sharing—offer a valuable inter-organizational context through which to understand the attainment of customer knowledge sharing following M&As. Applying an integrated theoretical perspective from customer relationship management and M&A performance research, we study a Chinese–Finnish acquisition and customer firms of the acquired party across four advanced Western countries. We find that customer knowledge sharing is an active relationship management process that relies on the factors of customer dedication-based motivation vs. customer concerns about M&As to maintain relationships after acquisitions. In addition, and more importantly, we find that the promise management mechanisms—making promises, enabling promises, and keeping promises—of the M&A parties reinforce the motivational factors to maintain customer knowledge sharing in cross-border M&As. We propose a conceptual framework of customer knowledge sharing in cross-border M&As.