An Empirical Test of a Neo-Malthusian Theory of Fertility Change

Some neo-Malthusians regard fertility as being kept in check by scarcities and constraints and, conversely, as being raised by economic prosperity. Since out-migration to developed countries and the receipt of food aid from developed countries relax the constraints imposed by a country’s carrying capacity, both will have a positive effect on fertility rates in developing countries. Moreover, better economic prospects will also raise fertility, all other things equal. This article provides an empirical test of these hypotheses derived from a neo-Malthusian theory of fertility change. The results fail to confirm the theory and often contradict it.

Population Density is a Key Factor in Declining Human Fertility

In studying the complex determinants of human fertility, social scientists have given little attention to population density, although reproduction has been shown to be density-dependent for a wide variety of other species. Using fixed effects models on the time series of 145 countries and controlling for key social and economic variables, we find a consistent and significant negative relationship between human fertility and population density. Moreover, we find that individual fertility preferences also decline with population density. These findings suggest that population density should be included as a variable in future studies of fertility determinants.

A constitutional theory of the family

The paper re-examines the idea that a family can be viewed as a community governed by a self-enforcing constitution, and extends existing results in two directions. First, it identifies the circumstances in which a constitution is renegotiation-proof. Second, it introduces parental altruism. The behavioural and policy implications are illustrated by showing the effects of public pensions and credit rationing. These implications are not much affected by whether altruism is assumed or not, but contrast sharply with those of more conventional models.

发挥兵团文化优势，建设军垦新型生育文化

新疆生产建设兵团在五十多年的时间里,形成了具有明显兵团特色的新型军垦生育文化。本文拟从移民文化、党政军企合一的军垦文化、兵团特色的妇女文化等视角来揭示兵团新型军垦生育文化的成因．为构建社会主义新型生育文化提供一个可资借鉴的经验。     

社会学民族志的力量:重返早期社会研究的田野工作

自20世纪70年代以来,社会学民族志在田野工作和叙事复兴中与传统人文学汇聚,显著扩展了自己的学科边界。但是,这种扩展并没有解决社会学民族志在深度的经验发生和强烈的理论诉求之间遭遇的紧张。对于这种紧张,本文主张再访早期社会研究的田野,即19世纪末期到一战之前的若干典型研究,从中反思早期社会学田野工作是如何在“直接经验”的倾向中完成类型化,以及如何在这个经验感获得的同时改变对社会世界的道德想象。早期社会学的田野工作的力量之一不在于以规范的诉求压制经验感,而是以独特的情感结构连接经验的观察和道德理想的重生。由此,我们不仅需要反思诸如社会调查到社区研究这样的简单思路,更要重新理解理论史上所谓的“进步主义式”的道德本身。这一工作对重新认识早期社会研究和今天的社会学民族志都具有意义上的准备。     

On high fertility rates in developing countries: birth limits, birth taxes, or education subsidies?

In this paper, we consider two types of population policies observed in practice: birth limits and birth taxes. We find that both achieve very similar equilibrium solutions if tax revenue finances lump-sum transfers. By reducing fertility and promoting growth, both birth policies may achieve higher welfare than conventional education subsidies financed by income taxes. A birth tax for education subsidies can achieve the first-best solution. The welfare gain of the first-best policy may be equivalent to a massive 10–50% rise in income, depending on the degree of human capital externalities and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution.      

Likelihood inference for the component lifetime distribution based on progressively censored parallel systems data

Point and interval estimators for the scale parameter of the component lifetime distribution of a k-component parallel system are obtained when the component lifetimes are assumed to be independently and identically exponentially distributed. We prove that the maximum likelihood estimator of the scale parameter based on progressively Type-II censored system lifetimes is unique and can be obtained by a fixed-point iteration procedure. In particular, we illustrate that the Newton–Raphson method does not converge for any initial value. Furthermore, exact confidence intervals are constructed by a transformation using normalized spacings and other component lifetime distributions including Weibull distribution are discussed.     

Bayesian inference for the parameters of Weibull distribution under progressive Type-I interval censored data with beta-binomial removals

This article considers the problem of estimating the parameters of Weibull distribution under progressive Type-I interval censoring scheme with beta-binomial removals. Classical as well as the Bayesian procedures for the estimation of unknown model parameters have been developed. The Bayes estimators are obtained under SELF and GELF using MCMC technique. The performance of the estimators, has been discussed in terms of their MSEs. Further, expression for the expected number of total failures has been obtained. A real dataset of the survival times for patients with plasma cell myeloma is used to illustrate the suitability of the proposed methodology.     

Variable selection for semiparametric proportional hazards model under progressive Type-II censoring

Variable selection is an effective methodology for dealing with models with numerous covariates. We consider the methods of variable selection for semiparametric Cox proportional hazards model under the progressive Type-II censoring scheme. The Cox proportional hazards model is used to model the influence coefficients of the environmental covariates. By applying Breslow’s “least information” idea, we obtain a profile likelihood function to estimate the coefficients. Lasso-type penalized profile likelihood estimation as well as stepwise variable selection method are explored as means to find the important covariates. Numerical simulations are conducted and Veteran’s Administration Lung Cancer data are exploited to evaluate the performance of the proposed method.     

Statistical inference for the Gompertz distribution based on Type-II progressively hybrid censored data

In this article, the statistical inference for the Gompertz distribution based on Type-II progressively hybrid censored data is discussed. The estimation of the parameters for Gompertz distribution is obtained using maximum likelihood method (MLE) and Bayesian method under three different loss functions. We also proved the existence and uniqueness of the MLE. The one-sample Bayesian prediction intervals are obtained. The work is done for different values of the parameters. We apply the Monto Carlo simulation to compare the proposed methods, also an example is discussed to construct the Prediction intervals.