China's Below‐Replacement Fertility: Recent Trends and Future Prospects

Between 1970 and 1990, China experiencoed a rapid and sharp fertility decline—from total fertility rates of approximately six births to two. The degree to which Chinese fertility has continued to fall after 1990 is controversial. We use survey data from the 1997 National Population and Reproductive Health Survey and from the 2001 Reproductive Health and Family Planning Survey to document recent trends in Chinese fertility. Our estimates provide further evidence that China's fertility is well below‐replacement level at the turn of the twenty‐first century—with TFR levels of approximately 1.5 children per woman. Trends in parity‐specific cohort fertility by age also suggest below replacement completed fertility for cohorts still in the childbearing years. In the article's second section, we identify key components of low period fertility in order to frame our discussion of two questions: 1) in what ways is Chinese low fertility different from/similar to that in other low‐fertility countries? And 2) what are the likely future trends in Chinese fertility?     

The Correspondence Between Fertility Intentions and Behavior in the United States

Using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we describe the correspondence between intended family size and observed fertility for US men and women in the 1957–64 birth cohorts. Mean fertility intentions calculated from reports given in the mid‐20s modestly overstate completed fertility. But discrepancies between stated intent and actual fertility are common—the stated intent at age 24 (for both women and men) is more likely to miss than to match completed fertility. We focus on factors that predict which women and men will have fewer or more children than intended. Consistent with life‐course arguments, those unmarried, childless, or (for women) still in school at approximately age 24 were most likely to underachieve their intended parity (i.e., had fewer children than intended at age 24). We discuss how such discrepancies between intentions and behavior may cumulate to produce sizable cross‐group fertility differences.     

Fecundability and the Frequency of Marital Intercourse: New Models Incorporating the Ageing of Gametes

A companion paper in the last issue reviewed the literature on effects of frequency of intercourse on fecundability. At moderately high coital frequencies, predicted effects of further increases on fecundability based on previous work vary widely. New modelling reported here, designed to take into account the ageing of gametes, attempts to identify a set of limits within which the true relationship of coital frequency and fecundability at moderate to high frequencies may confidently be expected to lie.     

Union organizing effort and success in the U.S., 1948–2004

While union density in the public sector has increased in recent decades, private sector union density in the U.S. has declined steadily since the mid-1950s. Scholars have evoked a variety of explanations to account for the decline in union membership, but substantially less attention has been devoted to understanding the contribution of the union organizing process as governed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In this paper, we focus on two aspects of this process: union organizing effort (the effort to establish union representation elections to organize non-unionized workers) and union organizing success (success in winning union representation elections). Using annual time series data for the U.S. from 1948 to 2004, we show that there has been a long-term decline in both union organizing effort and union organizing success, which likely contributes to declining union density. We focus on three explanations for these changes: the political–legal environment for unions, deindustrialization and globalization, and employer opposition to unionization efforts. We find that each of these factors contributes to organizing effort and success and conclude with a discussion of the implications of this research for future mobilization efforts.     

Unhealthy Weight in Indian Families: The Role of the Family Environment in the Context of the Nutrition Transition

India faces a dual burden of increasing obesity and persistent underweight as it experiences the nutrition transition—the dietary and lifestyle changes that accompany globalization, economic development, and technological change. Yet, the nutrition transition is not solely a top-down process; rather, global forces converge with local practices at multiple levels of the social ecology. The family environment, a key site for the transmission of local customs and norms, remains largely unexplored in India. We examined the extent to which opposite-gender siblings and mother–child pairs were concordant or discordant in body weight, and whether domains of the family environment, specifically, food practices, food-related gender norms, and household resources, were associated with patterns of unhealthy weight within and between families. Multilevel dyadic analysis and logistic regression were conducted using survey data from a representative sample of 400 families in a Southern Indian city. We identified substantial clustering of weight among opposite-gender sibling pairs (ICC = 0.43) and mother–child pairs, as well as important patterns of discordance, including 11% of families experiencing a dual burden of underweight and overweight. Household resources, including mother’s education and income, were salient in explaining the distribution of body weight within and between families. Importantly, less examined domains of the family environment were also relevant, including food practices (e.g., grocery shopping frequency), and food-related gender norms (e.g., mother’s control of food served at home). Continued exploration of how global and local practices converge in households will be necessary to develop programming that effectively addresses India’s dual burden of unhealthy weight.     

Spatial Patterns of Fertility Transition in Indian Districts

The article explores the dynamics of Indian fertility at the district level using a child‐woman index developed from the four Indian censuses, 1961 to 1991. It employs statistical and geostatistical techniques to assess fertility change across districts and periods. Fertility decline is evident in every region, but sizable regional differentials exist. A cluster analysis of fertility profiles indicates that a clear spatial pattern of fertility in India has emerged and the pattern intensified because of the process of fertility decline.     

Confirming and Expanding the Usefulness of the Extended Satisfaction With Life Scale (ESWLS)

The role of stress, particularly economic hindrance,in the prediction of global life-satisfaction wascontrasted between typically younger (n = 109)and more mature (n = 66) undergraduate students. Participants completed a Personal Projects AnalysisAppraisal Matrix including six stress dimensions, aswell as a single-item measure of globallife-satisfaction. Discriminant function analysesconducted on the students' Personal Project appraisalsrevealed that project challenge and economic hindranceaccounted for 25% of the variability inlife-satisfaction for the mature students, but none ofthe stress dimensions predicted life satisfaction forthe younger students. These results indicate that therole of stress in the prediction of life-satisfactionvaries as a function of age, with project challengeand economic hindrance playing a significant role inolder students' lives. The results are discussed inrelation to the developmental context of personalprojects as life tasks and the varying contexts foracademic pursuit between mature and typically youngerundergraduate students.     

White and nonwhite trends in first birth timing: Comparisons using vital registration and current population surveys

The magnitude of racial differences in first birth timing vary greatly depending upon the data sources from which they are estimated. Vital registration data (Heuser 1976; with updates from the National Center for Health Statistics 1974–1990) show that in recent years nonwhites have higher risks of a first birth at virtually all ages compared to whites. As a result very large and historically novel differentials in childlessness are forecast using these data (see Rindfuss et al. 1988; Chen & Morgan 1991; Morgan & Chen 1992). However, retrospective fertility history data collected from the 1980, 1985 and 1990 Current Population Surveys (CPS) suggest much smaller racial differences in completed childlessness and isolate racial differences in probabilities of first births at young ages. Differences also exist between theses two series for whites prior to the mid-1960s but not afterwards. Reasons for these differing estimates are suggested and examined. We conclude that a substantial portion of the differences result from an accumulation of biases in the vital registration estimates that affect primarily estimates of first birth timing. Thus, the CPS data provide a more firm basis for racial comparisons of first birth timing.