To have or not to have? Australian women’s childbearing desires,expectations and outcomes

Australia’s low fertility rate is commonly attributed to deliberate decisions by women to avoid having children. Existing theoretical explanations of fertility decision-making mostly view childbearing as a rational, voluntary process and focus on the ‘costs’ to women of having children. Although this may help explain why women do not have children, it contributes very little to understanding why women do have children. This study describes childbearing desires, expectations and outcomes in a population-based sample of 569 30–34-years-old Australian women recruited from the Australian Electoral Roll in 2005. Most women surveyed wanted to have children, and their childbearing outcomes were associated with biological, psychological and social factors including the lack of a partner and adverse health conditions. The factors and their relative importance varied by parity. Most women had fewer children than they desired, and many would have children, or more children, if their circumstances were different. These data challenge prevailing assumptions about women’s childbearing behaviour that women are able to choose when and if they have a child. Based on the findings, a conceptual framework of childbearing behaviour is proposed which builds on existing theoretical explanations to explain why women do and do not have children, differences by parity, and the role of circumstances in women’s childbearing behaviour. The findings and conceptual framework have implications for public policies, and indicate that multiple approaches are required which are sensitive to and address the barriers women face in family formation.     

Same-Sex Married Tax Filers After <Emphasis Type="Italic">Windsor</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Obergefell</Emphasis>

This article provides new estimates of the number and characteristics of same-sex married couples after U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 2013 and 2015 established rights to same-sex marriage. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service subsequently ruled that same-sex spouses would be treated as married for federal tax purposes. Because almost all married taxpayers file joint tax returns, administrative tax records provide new information on the demographic characteristics of married same-sex couples. This study provides estimates of the population of same-sex tax filers drawn from returns filed in 2013, 2014, and 2015, using methods developed by the U.S. Census Bureau to address measurement error in gender classification. We estimate that approximately 0.48 % of all joint filers in 2015 were same-sex couples, or approximately 250,450 couples.     

Understanding Persistence in the Resistance

Since Donald Trump's inauguration, large‐scale protest events have taken place around the United States, with many of the biggest events being held in Washington, DC. The streets of the nation's capital have been flooded with people marching about a diversity of progressive issues, including women's rights, climate change, and gun violence. Although research has found that these events have mobilized a high proportion of repeat participants who come out again and again, limited research has focused on understanding differential participation in protest, especially during one cycle of contention. This article, accordingly, explores the patterns among the protest participants to understand differential participation and what we refer to as “persistence in the Resistance.” In it, we analyze a unique data set collected from surveys conducted with a field approximation of a random sample of protest participants at the largest protest events in Washington, DC, since the Resistance began at the 2017 Women's March. Our findings provide insights into repeat protesters during this cycle of contention. The article concludes by discussing how our findings contribute to the research on differential participation.     

Pension reform and labor market incentives

This paper investigates how parametric reform in a pay-as-you-go pension system with a tax–benefit link affects retirement and work incentives of prime-age workers. We find that postponed retirement tends to harm incentives of prime-age workers in the presence of a tax–benefit link, thereby creating a policy trade-off in stimulating aggregate labor supply. We show how several popular reform scenarios are geared either towards young or old workers or, indeed, both groups under appropriate conditions. We characterize the excess burden of pension insurance and show how it depends on the supply elasticities of both decision margins and the effective tax rates.     

The reverse wage gap among educated White and Black women

Using the 2004 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses and the 2004–2005 American Community Surveys, we estimate the Black–White wage gap among females with at least some college education. We find that Black female nurses earn 9% more at the mean and median than White female nurses, controlling for selection into nursing employment. Among K-12 teachers, Black females earn 7% more than White females at the median. There is no Black–White wage gap among all women with a bachelor’s degree. Differences in opportunities for education and marriage between White and Black women may explain why highly educated Black females earn on par with highly educated White females.