Environmental quality and fertility: the effects of plant density,species richness,and plant diversity on fertility limitation

The relationship between the environment and population has been of concern for centuries, and climate change is making this an even more pressing area of study. In poor rural areas, declining environmental conditions may elicit changes in family-related behaviors. This paper explores this relationship in rural Nepal looking specifically at how plant density, species richness, and plant diversity are related to women’s fertility limitation behavior. Taking advantage of a unique data set with detailed micro-level environmental measures and individual fertility behavior, I link geographically weighted measures of flora at one point in time to women’s later contraceptive use as a way to examine this complex relationship. I find a significant, positive relationship between plant density, species richness, and plant diversity and the timing of contraceptive use. Women in poor environmental conditions are less likely to terminate childbearing, or do so later, and therefore more likely to have larger families.     

Intimate Partner Violence and Women’s Economic and Non-Economic Activities in Minya,Egypt

Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women is widespread, but its implications for their economic and non-economic activities are understudied. Leveraging new data from 564 ever-married women aged 22–65 in rural Minya, Egypt, we estimated logistic regressions and zero-inflated negative binomial regressions to test spillover, compensation, and patriarchal bargaining theories about the influences of women’s exposure to IPV on their engagement in and time spent on market, subsistence, domestic, and care work. Supporting compensation theory, exposures to lifetime, recent, and chronic physical or sexual IPV were associated with higher adjusted odds of performing market work in the prior month, and exposures to recent and chronic IPV were associated with higher adjusted odds of performing subsistence work in this period. Supporting compensation and patriarchal bargaining theories, exposures to recent and chronic IPV were associated with more time spent on domestic work in the prior day. Supporting spillover and patriarchal bargaining theories, exposures to lifetime IPV of all forms were associated with lower adjusted odds of performing mostly nonspousal care work in the prior day, and this association was partially mediated by women’s generalized anxiety. Women in rural Minya who are exposed to IPV may escalate their housework to fulfill local norms of feminine domesticity while substituting economic activities for nonspousal care work to enhance their economic independence from violent partners.     

Tracing the Life of a Crime Category

This article traces the shifting meaning of “date rape” in US newspapers across a fourteen-year period. A crime category created by a niche feminist press, “date rape” originally referred to a form of intimate-partner violence, and has, more latterly, come to refer predominantly to an assault that occurs after a victim has had a drug, such as Rohypnol, surreptitiously slipped into her drink. Employing quantitative content analysis to explicate this shift, the article considers possible explanations for the changing meaning of “date rape,” including the applicability of the risk thesis and criminological theory on the de-politicisation of crime. Finally, I suggest that a feminist perspective allows us to recognise that “date rape” has been transformed from an issue of female disempowerment into a nebulous threat of limited ideological significance.     

Reliability,Validity, and Variability of the Subjective Well-Being Questions in the 2010 American Time Use Survey

Part of a wider range of investigations to produce generally acceptable standards for measuring affective well-being, time diary surveys have tested several approaches to measuring subjective well-being during diary days. As an alternative to the standard approach of asking a single question about each activity reported in time diary surveys, the 2010 module of the American Time Use Survey asked six emotion questions about three activities. The perception questions captured how happy, meaningful, sad, tired, stressed, or in pain respondents felt on a 7-point scale. To evaluate this approach, our research examined the reliability and validity of the six emotion questions, and assessed their variability across activities. Using principal component analysis, we assessed the associations among items and obtained two activity-level components with Cronbach’s alphas of 0.68 and 0.59 and two respondent-level components with Cronbach’s alphas of 0.74 and 0.65. To test validity, we regressed self-rated health on the underlying components and socio-demographic controls. Both of the respondent level components were significantly associated with better health (odds ratio 1.81, 1.27). Using each of the perceptions individually, we found that happiness, meaningfulness, and lack of fatigue, stress, and pain were related to better health, but none as strongly as the first component. Finally, we examined the coefficients of variation to assess the variability in the well-being measures across activities. Measurement implications and limitations of this study are discussed.     

HOUSEHOLD FINANCES,INCOME SHOCKS,AND FAMILY SEPARATION IN BRITAIN

We examine the effect of household financial indebtedness on the incidence of partnership dissolution using a large survey of families with children in Britain. We use detailed data on household finances to provide a robust statistical analysis of the relationship between indebtedness and partnership dissolution and to avoid the potential simultaneity of financial and psychological health responses that arise when using self‐reported data on the extent of household “financial problems.” We examine whether the data provide any support for the “economic” models of divorce and separation developed by Gary Becker and his colleagues. (JEL J12, D12)     

Most and Least Meaningful Learning Experiences in Marriage and Family Therapy Education

Marriage and family therapy educators increasingly emphasize training competencies. What we know less about is what makes family therapy education meaningful to marriage and family therapy (MFT) graduate students and what does not. In this study, through an Internet survey, we explored the most and least meaningful learning experiences of 68 MFT graduate students and recent graduates of Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education—accredited programs. We used thematic analysis to identify and illustrate resulting themes, which included the importance of experiential and personal components to learning, the professor‐student alliance, tying theory to practice, and the experiences of students with their clients, among others. We discuss the implications of these findings to support family therapy education and offer tentative suggestions for formative discussions both within and across programs. Video Abstract is found in the online version of the article .