Household Size as a Correlate of Divorce Rate: A County-Level Analysis

Divorce remains one of the main challenges facing American families today. Previous studies have shown that the risk of divorce is influenced by many factors, including spouses' characteristics and the types of neighborhoods in which they live. This study extends previous work by examining the association between household size and divorce rate at the county level using 1990 and 2000 county-level data. The results show that household size is negatively and significantly associated with divorce rate in both 1990 and 2000, regardless of the region of residence. That effect was stronger in 2000, where household size appeared as the second most significant correlate of divorce rate among all other variables considered in the linear multiple regression analysis. Such findings suggest that household size acts as a social capital variable which helps to maintain family structure, thus reducing the risk of union dissolution.     

Implications of economic reform and spatial mobility for fertility in Vietnam

Vietnam has registered a dramatic decline in fertility during the last decades. While the causes of such a sustained decline are still not well documented, many observers believe that government policies adopted in the 1980s have contributed to lower fertility. This article focuses on the implications of the Doi Moi program of market reforms on fertility, taking into account the influences of migration and population policy. The analysis is based on a sequential logit model of birth histories of ever married women interviewed in Vietnam in 1997. The results show a substantial decline in fertility since the Doi Moi program was introduced. The disruptive effects of migration are less pronounced, although migrants generally exhibit lower childbearingrates, and a somewhat different pattern of parity progression. We argue that the economic reforms of 1986, and the two-child policy initiated two years later, have reinforcedVietnamese women's desire for smaller families.     

Financial capital and premarital sexual activity in Africa: The case of Zambia

This paper examines two theoretical perspectives on sexual behavior in Africa using the 1992 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey data on never-married adolescent females. The results offer more support to the rational adaption hypothesis which assumes that many young women may be entering into sexual relationships to obtain money and material goods they cannot get within the financial capital of their families. There are, however, indications that some adolescents are sexually active before marriage as a result of the breakdown of traditional social controls that elders had over the younger people. The way in which this assumption of the social disorganization theory can be further explained is examined under the conceptual model of social capital.