Religious homogamy and voluntary childlessness in Canada

The aim of this study was to determine the influence of religious affiliation, religious homogamy, religiosity, and religious marriage on voluntary and temporary childlessness and to compare childlessness patterns among Canadian-born and foreign-born women. Data were obtained from the 1984 Canadian Fertility Survey of 2863 women aged 18-49 years who were married to their first husband or living in consensual unions. The sample included 216 childless women, of whom 98 were voluntarily childless and 91 were temporarily childless. Analysis performed with probit maximum likelihood techniques and bivariate forms revealed that homogamous Catholics were less likely to remain temporarily childless but more likely to be voluntarily childless than non-Catholics. Multivariate analysis found that age, marriage age, education, and husband's income were statistically significantly related to voluntary childlessness. The likelihood of childlessness was also influenced by young age, later marriage, higher education, employment, women with husbands with lower income, and women who attend church services less frequently. Religious homogamous marriage was unrelated to childlessness. Frequent church attendance decreased the odds of deciding not to have children. Neither Catholic homogamy nor non-Catholic homogamy had an important effect after interaction terms for both religiosity and homogamy were included. Childlessness among foreign-born women was significantly more likely among those whose husbands had lower income, nonreligious women, and non-Catholic women who married heterogamously. Canadian women's childlessness was significantly related to education, husband's income, religiosity, and non-Catholic homogamy.     

Family life cycle and labour force behaviour of married women

A sociologist analyzed 1984 data on 18-49 year old Canadian women married to their 1st husband to examine the effect of certain variables on the probability that they work at 3 different stages of the family life cycle. The older the woman the less likely she would be working at each state. Age was most significant at stage 1 (married with no children) (p.05) and less significant at stage 3 (married with 1 or more children and expected no more) (p.1). Neither age nor marriage age determined wife's labor force participation at stage 2 (married with 1 or more children and expected more). Marriage age was positively related to labor force participation at stage 1 (p.1). At all stages, the more education a woman had the more likely she worked. This effect was significant at stage 3 (p.1). Place of birth had a significant negative effect on employment at stage 3 (p.05). Canadian-born women with children had a tendency not to work or not seek work (stages 2 and 3), but those with no children either worked or were seeking work. The age of the youngest child had no significant effect on labor force participation. The more children a woman in stage 3 had the more likely she did not work (p.1), but those in stage 2 were more likely to work even though the number of children did not strongly influence labor force participation. Husband's income had a small effect on labor force participation of wives at all stages, but it was significant at stages 1 and 3 (p.1). Husbands were more likely to have a favorable attitude toward employment of wives at stages 1 and 3, but it was only significant at stage 3 (p.05). Women at stage 2 preferred to combine work, often part time, and motherhood. This study suggests that labor force participation of mothers will most likely continue to grow.     

Which couples at given parities expect to have additional births? An exercise in discriminant analysis

Do couples at given parities who expect to have additional births differ on selected characteristics from their counterparts who do not expect to have any more children? This question is examined herein focusing attention on the wife’s age, age at marriage, religion, and education and the husband’s education and income. The method used is the discriminant-function analysis. The data are from the 1965 U. S. National Fertility Study. The combined discriminatory power of the social and economic background characteristics examined herein has been found to be greater at higher parities than at lower ones, while the opposite is true of demographic characteristics.     

Global decisions versus local realities: Sustainability standards,priorities and upgrading dynamics in agricultural global production networks

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) in global production networks (GPNs) have grown significantly in prominence. Existing research largely assumed that VSSs create linear upgrading outcomes for all GPN actors and has studied VSSs from the point of adoption in the GPNs, rather than a broader range of stages in their lifecycle. To address these limitations, and building on literature around power and agency in GPNs, we develop the constellation of priorities (CoP) model to unpack the diverse and often diverging boardroom (Northern lead firm) and local (Southern supplier) priorities involved in such standards. Through in-depth fieldwork on horticulture in Kenya and cocoa in Nicaragua across the VSS lifecycle, we find significant divergences in priorities between farmer groups in both countries and lead firms in the UK and Germany. We demonstrate analytically and empirically that diverging priorities coupled with power asymmetries produced contestations, leading to simultaneous economic and environmental downgrading, and social upgrading.