One parent or two? The intertwining of American marriage and fertility patterns

Marriage and fertility in the United States have become less firmly entwined as more women bear children without marrying and more couples with children divorce. Today a sizeable number of children are expected to spend a portion of their childhood in one-parent households. Despite the trends in illegitimacy and divorce, the actual effect of out-of-wedlock childbearing on the living arrangements of children has not been fully explicated. Using the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle III, this paper estimates the probability that children aged 0–13 in 1982 are living in two-parent households, controlling for their mothers' marital statuses at their births. We find that marital status at birth is an important predictor of household structure at later ages for both white and black populations; however, the childhood environment is actually quite elastic as women marry, divorce, remarry, and redivorce.     

The Emergence of Two Distinct Fertility Regimes in Economically Advanced Countries

Beginning in 2000, in economically advanced countries, a remarkable bifurcation in fertility levels has emerged, with one group in the moderate range of period total fertility rates, about 1.9, and the other at 1.3. The upper branch consists of countries in Northern and Western Europe, Oceania and the United States; the lower branch includes Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe, and East and Southeast Asia. A review of the major theories for low-fertility countries reveals that none of them would have predicted this specific bifurcation. We argue that those countries with fertility levels close to replacement level have institutional arrangements, and related policies, that make it easier, not easy, for women to combine the worker and mother roles. The institutional details are quite different across countries, suggesting that multiple combinations of institutional arrangements and policies can lead to the same country-level fertility outcome. Canada, the only exception to this bifurcation, illustrates the importance of the different institutional structures in Québec compared to the rest of Canada.     

Earnings,relative income,and family formation

The probability of first marriage for men who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 was analyzed with respect to their Social Security earnings records, Wisconsin income tax reports for parents, and other variables. The findings provide no support for Easterlin's hypothesis that marriage will occur earlier when young men judge their economic prospects favorably with respect to their parents' income. However, young men's earnings and time spent in schooling to increase them were found to be important influences on marriage timing. Additional schooling had little effect net of the time it absorbed.     

Analyzing birth intervals: Implications for demographic theory and data collection

In the last decade, the study of birth intervals has been greatly facilitated by a rapid expansion in data availability and by improvements in analytical techniques. Unfortunately, the results emerging from individual level, empirical studies of birth interval dynamics do not correspond with the predictions of standard demographic theory. This paper reviews a series of individual level studies that find substantial socioeconomic variation in childspacing after controlling statistically for the major intermediate or proximate variables. It then offers possible explanations for the lack of fit between theory and results at the micro level, concluding that the two most likely explanations are poor measurement of the four principal proximate determinants and the exclusion of additional proximate determinants.     

An intelligent dynamic simulation model for designing software development processes

This paper describes a computer-aided software development process design. This is a computerized intelligent tool designed to aid managers of software development projects in planning, managing and controlling the development process of medium to large scale software projects. The application of this computerized tool should help reduce the uncertainties involved in the budget, personnel and schedule planning of software development projects.     

The effect of respondent's kinship position on reported levels of integrational contact: USA and Japan

Intergenerational relationships are a topic of general concern to social scientists because of the importance of the family for individual's well-being, especially in times of crisis. Hence, a considerable amount of research on relationships between parents and their adult children has been published in a broad array of social science journals. Most of this research examines intergenerational relationships from the perspective of only one generation and implicitly assumes that we would get the same results if we were to examine the relationships from the point of view of other family members. In societies where there are strong norms regarding kin contact, this assumption is likely to be invalid. This research examines reported levels of face-to-face contact among kin in the USA and Japan, and tests whether these reports are systematically different for respondents in some kinship positions than in others. The results show that norms favoring patrilineal contact in Japan can produce reporting bias. In Japan, married daughters tend to underreport levels of contact with their parents. In the USA, children-in-law report lower levels of visiting.     

Contingent Work Rising: Implications for the Timing of Marriage in Japan

Employment has become increasingly precarious in developed countries, meaning that, for many young adults, jobs provide neither benefits nor security, more work is part time, and employers are increasingly hiring workers from temporary help agencies and contract companies rather than as employees of their own company. These changes in employment relations have profound effects on gender roles and on family transitions of young adults, especially young men and in particular in countries such as Japan, where there are rigid family norms and the male‐breadwinner tradition still prevails. The authors examined the effects of the experience of non‐regular work on the timing of marriage and whether this differs by sex. Using recent life history data from Japan, they found that men working in non‐regular jobs are especially likely to postpone marriage. The implications of the growth of precarious work for changes in work and family institutions in Japan are discussed.     

Reexamining the link of early childbearing to Marriage and to subsequent fertillty

Using data from the 1980, 1985, and 1990 Current Population Surveys, we show that the link between early fertility and nonmarital births has become stronger. Women who give birth earlier are increasingly likely to be unmarried. In contrast, we find a weaker association between first births at young (versus older) ages and (1) a rapid pace of subsequent childbearing and (2) higher completed fertility. We discuss possible causes and consequences of these changes.     

Child care availability and first-birth timing in Norway

Both sociological and economic theories posit that widely available, high-quality, and affordable child care should have pronatalist effects. Yet to date, the empirical evidence has not consistently supported this hypothesis. We argue that this previous empirical work has been plagued by the inability to control for endogenous placement of day care centers and the possibility that people migrate to take advantage of the availability of child care facilities. Using Norwegian register data and a statistically defensible fixed-effects model, we find strong positive effects of day care availability on the transition to motherhood.