Child abuse in the context of domestic violence: prevalence, explanations, and practice implications

This article addresses the following questions: (a) How common is child abuse among domestically violent families? (b) Are there specific patterns of child abuse among domestically violent families? (c) What may explain occurrences of child abuse in domestically violent families? (d) How might domestic violence affect treatment for child abuse? We review research on child abuse in the context of domestic violence. We discuss implications of this research for service-delivery programs for domestically violent families.     

Contraceptive sterilization in Puerto Rico

For twenty years Puerto Rico has had the world’s highest prevalence of sterilization. From the 1982 Puerto Rico Fertility and Family Planning Assessment we examine whether the probability of obtaining sterilization is changing and what impact sterilization has on fertility, finding that the use of contraceptive sterilization has not declined and will probably continue to increase in Puerto Rico. Nonuse rather than temporary methods of contraception is the second most likely circumstance after sterilization. We also find that sterilization has reduced the total marital fertility rate by over 33 percent, thus having a significant effect on reducing the rate of natural increase; by all indications, it will have a greater effect in the future.     

Asset Accumulation And Family Size

Utilizing panel data on families, estimates are made of the effects of children on asset accumulation, asset composition, consumption, and family income. Young children are found to depress savings for young families but to increase savings for marriages of duration greater than five years. The principal channel through which children act to reduce savings is the decline in female earnings associated with the child-induced withdrawal of wives from the labor force. Family consumption actually decreases with the birth of a child, but this reduction is insufficient, for young families, to offset the fall in income. For families in which the wife does not work the estimates suggest that savings may actually increase with children.     

Some new techniques for applying the housing unit method of local population estimation

The housing unit method of population estimation is often characterized as being imprecise and having an upward bias. We believe that the method itself cannot properly be characterized by a particular level of precision or direction of bias. Only specific techniques of applying the method can have such characteristics. In this paper we discuss several new techniques we have developed for estimating households and the average number of persons per household. Estimates produced by these techniques are compared to estimates produced by several other techniques. Special census results from Florida provide preliminary evidence that the new techniques produce more precise, less biased estimates than the other techniques.     

Urbanization and the fertility transition in Ghana

This paper examines the way in which migration and urban residence operate to alter fertility outcomes. While urban-rural fertility differentials have long been established for most developing societies, the nature of these differences among migrants and between migrants and those of succeeding generations is not well understood. The evidence presented here suggests that rural-urban migration and urbanization may contribute positively to processes of fertility transition. Using data from the 1998 Kumasi Peri-Urban Survey, which included a 5-year retrospective monthly calendar of childbearing, we suggest that migrants adapt quickly to an urban environment. Our results also reveal generational differences in recent and cumulative fertility. While migrants exhibit higher cumulative fertility than urban residents of the second and third generation, their fertility is significantly lower than rural averages in Ghana. Children of migrants exhibit childbearing patterns quite similar to those in higher-order generations. Most noteworthy is the nature of the disparities in childbearing patterns between migrants and the succeeding generations. Migrant women have higher lifetime fertility than urban natives. Migrant women also exhibit higher fertility over the last 5 years than second generation or high-order urban natives. But these first generation women exhibit lower fertility (vs. urban natives) for the year immediately prior to the survey. These patterns lend support to an interpretation that combines rather than opposes theories of selectivity, disruption, adaptation and socialization. We conclude by discussing mechanisms that might explain these interrelated processes of fertility adjustment and suggest that policies discouraging rural-urban migration need to be revisited.     

Self-care: Why do parents leave their children unsupervised?

We used a preferences-and-constraints model to develop four hypotheses to explain why parents may choose self-care (an unsupervised arrangement) as the primary child care arrangement for their children over supervised alternatives and tested them in a multivariate framework using 1995 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We found that the choice of self-care over supervised care alternatives is linked to the availability of parents' time to care for children, the child's level of responsibility and maturity, and the neighborhood context. However, we found no evidence that parents' ability to pay for child care is related to the choice of self-care. The results also suggest that parents use different decision-making processes, depending on their children's ages.     

Muslim and Non‐Muslim Differences in Female Autonomy and Fertility: Evidence from Four Asian Countries

On the basis of research on paired Muslim and non‐Muslim communities selected in India, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, the authors test the hypothesis that greater observed Muslim pronatalism can be explained by less power or lower autonomy among Muslim women. Indeed, wives in the Muslim communities, compared to the non‐Muslim ones: 1) had more children, 2) were more likely to desire additional children, and 3) if they desired no more children, were less likely to be using contraception. However, the authors do not find that Muslim communities consistently score lower on dimensions of women's power/autonomy. Thus, aggregate‐level comparisons provide little evidence of a relationship between lower autonomy and higher fertility. Individual‐level multivariate analysis of married women in these paired settings similarly suggests that women's autonomy differentials do not account for the higher fertility, demand for more children, and less use of contraception among Muslim wives. These results suggest that explanations for Muslim/non‐Muslim fertility differences lie elsewhere.     

Unemployment and marital dissolution

This paper analyses the effects of unemployment on the probability of marital dissolution. Based on panel data for a sample of Danish married couples, we estimate a dynamic model for the probability of marital dissolution where we take into account the possible effects of unemployment for both spouses. We also control for other factors such as education, age, presence of children, place of residence, health and economic factors. The empirical results show that unemployment seems to be an important factor behind marital instability. However, only unemployment of the husband has an effect, and this effect is immediate.We thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.