Time use satisfaction of wives: Home,farm, and labor force workload

Factors related to time spent in work roles are investigated for a sample of 685 wives living on family farms in seven southern and midwestern states. Data were collected in a comprehensive mail survey. Results show that variables reflecting management are the most important predictors of wife's time use satisfaction. Wife's satisfaction is also significantly related to her education and nonfarm employment. Conclusions indicate that, although wives on family farms experience work-role overload relative to their husbands, they are satisfied with their time contributions to the home/farm situation.Jeanne L. Hafstrom is Associate Professor, Consumer Sciences Division, University of Illinois, 161 Bevier Hall, 905 So. Goodwin, Urbana, IL 61801. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Her current research interests include economic well-being and the quality of life.MaryAnn Paynter is Assistant Professor and Family Economics Extension Specialist, Consumer Sciences Division, University of Illinois, 547 Bevier Hall, 905 So. Goodwin, Urbana, IL 61801. She received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Her current research interests include family resource management strategies.This study was part of S-191 Regional Research Project Farm Wife's External Employment, Family Economic Productivity and Family Functioning, and Project No. 60-0366 supported by the Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Agriculture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.     

Population growth,farmland, and the long-run standard of living

This paper studies the natural-resources element in the theory of population growth over the very long run. In the context of the stock of land and Malthusian crises in earlier times, the model shows how resources have become more available rather than more scarce, even as population and income have increased.The paper sketches a mechanism which, added to the Malthusian system, leads to entirely different conclusions than does the Malthusian system. Using the illustration of food and land, change in knowledge and hence in the stock of resources is made a function of the stock of knowledge and the price of resources. The speed of adjustment depends on the economic and social climate for the development of new knowledge. Population growth first raises food and land prices, which then stimulate the creation of new resources, eventually leading to less scarcity of resources and lower prices than originally prevailed.That is, population growth creates new problems which in the short run constitute additional burdens which, in the longer run, lead to new developments that leave people better off than if the problems had never arisen.This paper benefitted from being presented in earlier draft at a Population Association of America meeting, to the Economic History workshop at the University of Illinois, and to a seminar of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in New Delhi. We appreciate valuable comments on earlier drafts from Stanley Engerman, E. L. Jones, William McNeill, and two anonymous referees. Gunter Steinmann acknowledges financial support from the Volkswagen Foundation and a travel grant from Fulbright Commission.     

Recent trends in the process of stratification

Using the 14 annual cross-sections from the General Social Survey, we specify a "basic model" of attainment and describe the year-by-year fluctuations in its parameters. The results are partially consistent with theories describing the gradual growth of universalistic patterns of stratification and mobility. Under a linear model of educational achievement, we find that the direct effects of race are weakening and the returns to class-based advantages are declining in tandem. The contours of the socioeconomic "gender gap" are also changing in important ways, with the male intercept declining at a rapid pace and the female term registering small and insignificant year-by-year gains. At the same time, the returns to experience and schooling are increasing for men, whereas the corresponding returns for women have remained stable over the 15-year period. This pattern of interaction effects implies that the size of the gender gap varies over time and across different population groups.     

Reconceptualizing migration as a household phenomenon: outmigration from New York City by race and Hispanic origin

"This paper proposes a conceptual framework for analyzing migration as a household event and presents two public use microdata applications of this approach for out-migrants from New York City. The distribution of single- and multi-origin households by race and Hispanic origin permits a more rigorous analysis of household migration differentials....and the disaggregation of household members by migration status provides insight into the household outcomes of the migration process...." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Temporal dimensions of the fertility transition: an age-period-cohort analysis of frontier fertility

"This paper evaluates age, period, and cohort effects on marital fertility during onset of the Utah fertility transition (1880-1900). Computerized genealogies are used to derive age-period-cohort fertility rates for 49,842 once-married couples. Age, period and cohort effects on marital fertility are then estimated using Johnson's (1985) relational model. Declining marital fertility in Utah is shown to be explained by both lower fertility levels across periods and increasing age-specific limitation across cohorts. Direct cohort effects on fertility are insignificant. These results are consistent with prior research, and the view that fertility levels were adaptive (in part through birth spacing across ages) to immediate contexts of childbearing while age-specific fertility truncation increased across cohorts (in part through the more general diffusion of contraceptive innovations)."