Selectivity,adaptation, or disruption? A comparison of alternative hypotheses on the effects of migration on fertility: the case of Brazil

This study, based on Brazilian data from 1976, compared the fertility of migrants and stayers at both origin and destination areas. Observed patterns of fertility differentials were then analyzed in terms of 4 hypotheses of fertility behavior focused on processes of socialization, adaptation, selectivity, and disruption. In the study sample, 31% of migrants moved from rural to urban areas, 45% of moves were between urban areas, and 20% of moves were between rural areas. Among rural-to-urban migrants, only 1/3 moved from traditional to modern regions. To uncover the main patterns of migrant and stayer fertility differentials in the study population, the major flows of migrants by origin and destination were disaggregated by recency of migration, education, and age. The overall conclusions were as follows: 1) rural-urban migration flows need to be disaggregated into various modern/traditional cross-classifications (e.g., modern-rural, traditional-urban, frontier-urban) and greater emphasis needs to be placed on rural-urban, urban-urban, and rural-rural flows; 2) no robust quantitative measures of migrant-stayer fertility differentials held across migrant groups, implying that migrants differing in terms of age, education, origin, and destination are likely to behave in significantly variable fashion with regard to stayer standards of fertility behavior; 3) migrant groups with overall lower fertility levels, such as the young and better educated, are less likely to experience significant fertility reduction to bridge the origin/destination fertility gap; 4) rural-to-rural migrants do not appear to experience any lasting fertility reduction even when they move to areas with lower overall fertility rates; 5) urban-to-rural migrants tend to bridge a larger fraction of the uphill fertility gap than rural-to-urban migrants; and 6) there was evidence of partial adaptation for most migrant categories once disruption effects disappear and evidence consistent with the socialization hypothesis (no fertility reduction for at least 1 generation) was apparent for migrants originating in the least developed parts of Brazil, the frontier region, and the traditional-rural region.     

Myth and Reality: The ERA and the Gender Gap in the 1980 Election

Attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment were not an importantfactor in the emergence of the "gender gap" in the 1980 presidentialelection. Conclusions to the contrary by news analysts, feministpolitical activists, and political scientists are based on acombination of the power of expectation, faulty analysis, andrandom bias in the most frequently used survey in politicalscience. The data analyzed herein were collected by the New York Timesand CBS News and processed by the New York Times and CBS Newsunder a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation; by Warren E.Miller and the National Election Studies of the Center for PoliticalStudies at the University of Michigan; and by the National OpinionResearch Center of the University of Chicago. The data wereprovided through the Interuniversity Consortium for Politicaland Social Research of the University of Michigan. The New YorkTimes, CBS News, the CPS, NORC, and the ICPSR bear no responsibilityfor the analysis and interpretations presented here.     

THE EFFECT OF PROVIDER CONTROL OF BLUE SHIELD PLANS ON HEALTH CARE MARKETS

Blue Shield plans often are granted regulatory advantages by the states in which they operate. Run efficiently, such not-for-profit firms should use these lower costs to eliminate their less advantaged rivals, the commercial insurers. However, these higher-cost commercial providers have been able to offer insurance coverage at prices competitive with the Blues, as evidenced by the fact that Blue plans have, on average, less than 50 percent market share. Similar prices with lower overall costs implies that economic rents are being earned, rents which a not-for-profit firm cannot distribute to owners. In this paper we argue that when there are competing goals among the groups controlling the Blue Shield plans, the different possible "uses" of the regulatory advantage become endogenously determined, necessitating the use of simultaneous equation estimation. Testing this model we find the major effect of doctor-control of Blue Shield plans is to raise doctors' fees while lowering the amount of rents captured by both consumers and administrators.     

A tool for selecting residential child care workers: an initial report

What strengths and talents make an outstanding child care worker? How can these qualities be measured? How can one predict whether an individual will succeed as a child care worker? The authors attempt to answer these questions by focusing on the "life themes" of highly rated child care workers and using a technique to measure these themes.     

The Philippine Population Program: an overview

Since 1970 the Philippine population program has made considerable achievements in its effort to curb the country's high fertility rate. The program presently aims to attain a population growth rate of 2.0% in 1992 and eventually achieve replacement fertility for the country by the year 2000. To achieve these rates, the program has set into motion the so-called "high scenario" targets of greatly increasing the overall rates of use-effectiveness of program methods of contraception. The program continues to be guided by policies implemented since its start, as well as by new ones in resonse to recent developments. Though the program continues to receive funds from international donors, the Philippine government's share in the funding has steadily increased.     

Late fertility decline in the Netherlands: The influence of religious denomination,socioeconomic group and region

Both published results from the 1930, 1947, 1960 and 1971 censuses and unpublished ones are used to examine the influence that religious denomination, socio-economic group and region exerted on the fertility of marriages contracted between 1876 and 1959. A theory formulated by Lesthaeghe and Wilson on the relation between modes of production and secularization and the pace of fertility decline in Western Europe offers — in combination with van Heek's views on the special position of Dutch Roman Catholicism — a starting point for an explanation of why the fertility decline of Roman Catholics, self-employed and agricultural labourers lagged behind.     

Individual behavior under risk and under uncertainty: An experimental study

These experiments are concerned with individual behavior under risk and under uncertainty. By exploiting the isolation effect the experiments were able to offer to 134 subjects the possibility of actually gaining or losing an important sum of money.The experimental data show that under risk as well as under complete ignorance the subjects' attitudes towards prospects of gains and towards prospects of losses are totally unrelated.The data also show that when facing prospects of gains, the subjects generally take the exact probabilities of the events into account, whereas, when facing prospects of losses many of then have only recourse to coarser categories of plausibility, or even no longer use their information at all.     

The Philippine national recording systems on international migration

The author reviews migration data sources and government collection agencies in the Philippines. He finds that "despite the importance of international migration for national policy, efforts to correct the serious data limitations in the area of migration statistics have been limited and uncoordinated. In fact, most estimates of emigration levels from the Philippines still rely heavily on the data gathered by receiving countries."     

EXPERIMENTS WITH THE MIDDLE RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE IN SURVEY QUESTIONS

A series of experiments shows (1) that people are significantlymore likely to select the middle response alternative on anissue when it is explicitly offered to them as part of the questionthan when it is omitted; (2) that merely mentioning that thereis a middle alternative, in the preface to the question, makesit more likely that respondents will select it, even thoughit is not offered to them as an explicit choice; (3) that theorder in which the middle alternative is presented in the question—inthe middle or last position—can make a significant differencein the results, but that a "recency bias" does not occur invariably,or consistently; and (4) that people who select a middle responsealternative when it is offered would not necessarily answerthe question in the same way as other respondents if forcedto choose sides on the issue.