Urban versus Rural: Fertility Decline in the Cities and Rural Districts of Prussia, 1875 to 1910

Marital fertility in 54 Prussian cities and 407 Prussian Kreise (administrative areas) is analyzed using unusually rich and detailed socioeconomic and demographic data from eight quinquennial census between 1875 and 1910. Pooled cross-section time series methods are used to examine influences on marital fertility level and on marital fertility decline, focusing particularly on fertility differences according to level of urbanization. Increases in female labour force participation rate and income, the growth of financial services and communications, improvement in education, and reduction in infant mortality account for most of the marital fertility decline in 19th century Prussia. In 1875, rural and urban fertility were similar but by 1910, urban fertility was far lower than rural in part because the values of some of these variables changed more rapidly in the cities, and in part because some of these variables had stronger effects in urban settings.     

Decision Making with Uncertain Judgments: A Stochastic Formulation of the Analytic Hierarchy Process*

In the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), priorities are derived via a deterministic method, the eigenvalue decomposition. However, judgments may be subject to error. A stochastic characterization of the pairwise comparison judgment task is provided and statistical models are introduced for deriving the underlying priorities. Specifically, a weighted hierarchical multinomial logit model is used to obtain the priorities. Inference is then conducted from the Bayesian viewpoint using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. The stochastic methods are found to give results that are congruent with those of the eigenvector method in matrices of different sizes and different levels of inconsistency. Moreover, inferential statements can be made about the priorities when the stochastic approach is adopted, and these statements may be of considerable value to a decision maker. The methods described are fully compatible with judgments from the standard version of AHP and can be used to construct a stochastic formulation of it.     

Inhomogeneous Markov Chains and Ergodicity Coefficients: John Hajnal (1924–2008)

In 1958, a paper by John Hajnal, a demographer and mathematical statistician, was fundamental in the revival of the theory of inhomogeneous Markov chains. Hajnal made his contribution by the development of tools for the analysis of weak ergodicity, and proofs of fundamental theorems. This article reviews Hajnal's career, and then focuses on the four topics: 1. ergodicity coefficients and the weak ergodicity theorem; 2. scrambling matrices; 3. the coupling theorem; and 4. non-negative matrix products. Related work by other authors, especially Wolfgang Doeblin, is mentioned in context. Attention is given to some recent surveys and applications of ergodicity coefficients, including the Google matrix.     

Health and community services for trafficked women: an exploratory study of policy and practice

The trafficking of women has attracted considerable international and national policy attention, particularly since the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (2000), of which the Australian Government has been a signatory since 2005. The provision of health and community services for trafficked women is a central feature of this Protocol, but in Australia service provision is made difficult by how trafficked women are understood and treated in policy and legal terms. This study aimed to explore the provision of health and community services for trafficked women in the Greater Sydney region through a series of interviews with government and non‐government organisations. The findings reveal that services have been inaccessible as a result of sparse, uncoordinated, and poorly funded provision. The major obstacle to adequate and appropriate service provision has been a national policy approach focusing on ‘border protection’ and criminalisation rather than on trafficked women and their human rights. We conclude that further policy development needs to focus on the practical implications of how such rights can be translated into the delivery of health and community services that trafficked women can access and be supported by more effectively.     

A research note on male‐female differentials in the experience of heterosexual love

Debate regarding the morality of abortion has ranged from expressions of concern for the fetus by anti‐abortionists to assertions by those favoring legalized abortion that women should control their own bodies. The present research explored the possibility that the social acceptability of the sexual relationship and the extent of contraceptive conscientiousness of an abortion applicant influences favorability of response toward abortion. After responding to a measure of attitudes toward premarital contraceptive use, 40 college students read 10 brief case histories of young unmarried women who were purportedly requesting abortion. As hypothesized, participants' support for abortion was influenced by the source of contraceptive failure (method vs. personal), kind of contraceptive (artificial vs. natural), and kind of sexual relationship (steady vs. casual). Results were discussed in terms of the possibility that observers may wish to restore justice by giving greater support for abortion for conscientious contraceptive users involved in socially approved sexual relationships than for careless contraceptive users whose involvements are more casual. It was suggested that societal attitudes toward contraception for unmarried persons may interact with the reality of the prevalence of premarital sexual activity to increase the premarital pregnancy rate.     

Some factors in the valences of erotic visual stimuli

Duersted, Yul H. Green Fruit. New York, N. Y.: Grove Press, Inc. 1974. 283 pages. $ 9.50.

Fisher, Esther Oshiver. Divorce: The New Freedom. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. 198 + viii pages. $7.95.

Female Sterilization: Guidelines for the Development of Services, Geneva, World Health Organization, 1976 (WHO Offset Publication No. 26: ISBN 92 4 170026 2). 27 pages. Price: Sw. fr. 9.‐. US$ 3.60. French edition in preparation. Available through? Q Corporation, 49 Sheridan Avenue, Albany, N. Y. 12210

Gianturco, Daniel D., M.D. and Harmon L. Smith, B. D., Ph.D. The Promiscuous Teenager. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1974. 110 pages.

Kroger, William S., M.D. and William D. Fezler, Ph.D. Hypnosis and Behavior Modification: Imagery Conditioning. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 426 pp.

Storaska, Frederic. How to Say No to a Rapist and Survive. New York: Random House, Inc., 1975. 237 pages; $ 7.95.     

The differential gender effect of internalized racism on abdominal obesity in KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

This research examined the effect of a psychosocial variable, internalized racism, on abdominal obesity, as measured by waist circumference. Results show that the effect of internalized racism on waist circumference persists net of other controls among women, but not among men. Also, among women who had high levels of internalized racism and high educational levels, a positive relationship to abdominal obesity is evident despite the tendency of education to be protective of abdominal obesity. This study supports other research findings that internalized racism is related to waist circumference among adult women but not among men in Western Hemisphere blacks. It also supports past research findings of a gendered reaction to psychosocial stress. It also illustrates that this relationship occurs on the continent of Africa, an area where research on this phenomenon is scarce.     

Life domain statisfactions and personal social integration

Data from a sample of northwestern Wisconsin residents were analyzed to identify the contribution of specific life domain satisfactions to the prediction of satisfaction with social integration. The results show the dominant impact of family satisfaction across the sample and its sub-populations of age, sex and income. The contribution of satisfactions with spare time activities and organizational involvement is also fairly uniform over the various groups. The impact of satisfactions with work, spiritual life and the remaining domains, on the other hand, is highly selective for different subpopulations. The results support the hypothesis of greater family and community centeredness among the lower income individuals and the elderly, and of the greater impact of organizational involvement, spare time activities and national affairs on the high income individuals. The differential impact of some of the resource and consumption domains across the subpopulations underlines the prominence of alternate consumption orientations and different resource instrumentalities for attaining the feelings of social integration.     

The effect of supply chain integration, modular production, and cultural distance on new product development: A dynamic capabilities approach

Little research has examined how international firms' operations strategies affect dynamic capability creation or how cultural distance affects operations management. This study addresses these gaps by bridging the work on dynamic capabilities, two operations management techniques (product modularization and supplier integration) and cultural distance. Using a sample of 111 Brazilian automobile suppliers, the study finds that new product development is marginally increased by product modularization but decreased by supplier integration. Cultural distance negatively moderated these relationships. This research extends the dynamic capabilities literature and indicates that operations management strategy is an important part of the dynamic capability formation process.