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Childbearing motivation may be conceptualized as based upon psychological traits and shaped by experiences during childhood, adolescence, and early adult life. This paper explores what those traits and developmental experiences are. Two measures of childbearing motivation, one positive and the other negative, are described. Using a sample of 362 married men and 354 married women, the paper systematically examines the factors associated with these measures. In addition to a set of basic personality traits, these factors include parental characteristics, teenage experiences, and a number of variables from young adult behavior domains such as marriage, education, work, religion, and parental relationships. Stepwise multiple regression analyses lead to two final constrained, simultaneous-equation regression models. These models indicate the importance of both personality traits and diverse life-cycle experiences in the development of childbearing motivation, the differential gender distribution of predictors, and the different experiential antecedents of positive and negative motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relation between unmarried cohabitation and three important determinants of fertility-frequency of sexual intercourse, contraceptive practice, and the expectation to have a child within five years. Analyses based on data from the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth show that formerly married cohabitants are similar to married women with respect to these fertility determinants, but that never married cohabitants may have lower fertility in the short run because of extremely high levels of contraceptive practice. The paper also compares self-reported data on cohabitation with an inferred measure based on household composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By restricting the number of age groups to two and by introducing continued fractions, the dynamics of populations with deterministically changing vital rates are completely specified at all times. Explicit expressions for the sequence of the product of population projection matrices are given. From these, relative age distribution and reproductive values to any desired accuracy are obtained as functions of the vital rates. Thus, the results given in this paper are stronger than any existing weak ergodic theorems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper that evaluates the quality of vital statistics and census data for estimating African-American mortality. Demographers are certain that a serious difficulty in estimating African-American mortality levels results from age misreporting, especially at the older ages. The seriousness of this problem was revealed clearly in a direct matching of 1960 death certificates to records from the 1960 Census of Population. In only 44.7% of nonwhite male and 36.9% of nonwhite female matched cases was the same year of age reported in the census as on the death certificate. So, in the paper, the investigators have employed intercensal cohort comparisons and extinct generation estimates to demonstrate that conventionally constructed African-American death rates may be seriously flawed as early as age 50. Using the crude death rate at ages 50 + for 1978-1982 in conjunction with estimated growth rates and two model life table systems, the investigators have estimated black age-specific death rates in 1978-1982. The results suggest that if a racial crossover in death rates occurs, the age pattern of mortality among African-Americans must be far outside the range observed in populations with more accurate data.

This paper uses the family mode of organization framework to link together hypotheses relating social change to fertility limitation. Experiences in nonfamily activities are predicted to affect fertility behavior, with the outcome depending on the social, economic, and cultural context. To provide individual-level tests of hypotheses, the paper uses data from a Nepalese community which recently began dramatic family and fertility transitions. The findings show that experiences in nonfamily activities before marriage increase the odds of subsequently adopting fertility limitation in this setting. The evidence also demonstrates the importance of including measures of husbands' experiences in models of fertility decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to our limited knowledge of racial and ethnic variation in union formation by describing and analyzing the first unions of mainland Puerto Rican women. Retrospective history data show that Puerto Ricans have shared in the post-1970 shift toward cohabitation. Puerto Rican women, however, are much more likely to enter informal first unions than the general population, and have a low propensity to transform informal unions into legal marriages. The paper examines the influence of family background and current activities on union timing and type. The relationship between partner attributes and the choice between formal and informal coupling is also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that structural variables such as inequitable land distribution, lack of rural employment opportunities, and rural-urban wage and amenity gaps influence population movements in developing countries. Yet quantitative evidence is scant. In this paper a multilevel model is used to investigate the effects of individual-, household-, and areal-level factors on rural-urban out-migration in the Ecuadorian Sierra. Data from a detailed survey carried out in 1977-1978 and from government macro-areal statistics are used to investigate factors affecting the out-migration of youths aged 12-25. Preliminary conclusions are presented on the usefulness of multilevel models in studying migration and policy implications for Ecuador. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formula for the age distribution and other relationships that follow from it for any (non-stable) population presented by Preston and Coale are significant contributions to demography. The formulas summarize the relationships among various demographic measures precisely, and are formally analogous to the relationships that hold for stable populations. The significance of these formulas cannot be overstated; they allow us to understand clearly the relationships among demographic measures in any arbitrary population. However, when it comes to using them for estimating demographic measures when census data are defective, the method of estimation is still affected by defective data. The reason is that the series of age-specific growth rates reflects the observed census age distributions exactly so that any defects in the census data are summarized in the growth rates. This paper begins with the formulation of the discrete version of the "new synthesis" developed by Preston and Coale. With the discrete formulation, the three kinds of errors introduced when the continuous time formulas are applied to real data can be avoided. Then it is pointed out that when two accurate census data are available, the Preston-Coale procedure of "estimating" the age distribution at the second census is equivalent to checking the identity of the age distribution formula. Also "estimating" mortality by the procedure of Preston-Coale is shown to be equivalent to obtaining mortality directly from intercensal survival rates. That the procedure which involves the age-specific growth rates is equivalent to those that involve the intercensal survival rates may have escaped notice because there are no a priori constraints for patterns of age-specific growth rates to follow. The irregularity in growth rates due to defective data are not distinguishable from true irregularity that exists in the population, contrary to the well-known regularity in the pattern of survival rates in human populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the assessment of methods for adult mortality and maternal orphanhood. This paper concentrates on a number of procedures suggested recently for combining two independently collected sets of orphanhood data for the same country to yield a single set of adult mortality estimates referring to the intervening period. adult female mortality from data on maternal orphanhood. The two surveys of the same population have been conducted five years apart, the proportion of respondents whose mother is alive in each five-year age group according to the first survey can be compared with the equivalent proportion for respondents five years older, five years later. Assuming that the mortality and migration of respondents is not related to the mortality of their mothers, the ratio of each pair of proportions reflects the mothers' mortality during the inter survey period. This represents the values the proportions would take for a synthetic birth cohort if their mothers were exposed to constant mortality rates equal to the average of those in effect during the inter survey period.

In this paper, we have traced changes in the patterns of first marriage in the United States for cohorts of men and women born in 1880 through 1965 and for the years from 1900 through 1983. There were striking changes in marriage rates associated with each of the world wars and with the depression of the 1930s. In addition to these short-term fluctuations, a long-term shift in marriage rates is observed over the period from after World War II until about 1970. By the end of the 1970s, however, marriage rates had returned to levels similar to those observed before the war. The basic similarity in the timing of changes in marriage rates across age levels and for both men and women, blacks and whites, is a striking characteristic of these marriage curves. There are also, however, important differences among these groups with respect to the magnitude and slopes of the shifts. The postwar marriage boom was strongest among the young (those under age 24) and among whites. Similarly, the declines in marriage rates observed in the 1970s were greatest among the young. The marriage rates for teenagers display trends that diverge in many respects from those of older persons. For example, the marriage rates of male teenagers did not show the "peaks" and "valley" associated with World War II for older age groups and female teenagers. Moreover, there is little sign of the postwar marriage boom among black teenagers of either sex. Indeed, the marriage rates of black teenagers began to decline soon after the war, and by the 1970s the marriage rates of both male and female black teenagers had fallen below those of their white counterparts, reversing the pattern that had existed through the first half of this century. During the twenty-five or so years of the postwar marriage boom, which we believe can be characterized best as a period phenomenon, there were trends-eddies within the mainstream-which are probably most easily interpreted as the consequence of a cohort effect.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the ways in which the availability of family planning program outlets influences the likelihood of contraceptive use in rural Thailand. It focuses on a village-level measure of actual availability of sources rather than respondent perceptions of availability. Individual-level and village-level data collected as part of the second Thailand Contraceptive Prevalence Survey are used to test three hypotheses about the effects of actual availability: that (a) availability of family planning outlets increases the likelihood of contraceptive use; (b) it enhances the effect of a desire for no more children on the likelihood of use; and (c) it weakens the positive relationship between education and the likelihood of use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates ever-married birth rates by age and duration since first marriage and ever-married total fertility rates for the Republic of Korea, derived by applying an extension of the own-children method of fertility estimation to the 1975 and 1980 censuses. Since each census provides annual estimates for the 15-year period previous to enumeration, there is a ten-year period of overlapping estimates that facilitates checks for consistency and accuracy. Comparisons are also made with estimates derived from the 1974 Korea National Fertility Survey, which was part of the World Fertility Survey. The method works well, except in its application to the 1975 Census where the evidence suggests considerable misreporting of age at first marriage because of the way the question was asked and coded. Results confirm that ever-married fertility fell substantially in Korea between 1961 and 1980, with a temporary resurgence in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Ever-married fertility rose at younger ages and shorter durations and fell at older ages and longer durations. Ever-married fertility differentials by urban-rural residence and by education were usually in the expected direction, with urban fertility generally lower than rural fertility and the fertility of those with more education usually lower than the fertility of those with less education. Differential ever-married fertility by urban-rural residence and education declined over the estimation period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a relative cohort size model of suicide. The model states that as relative cohort size (the ratio of younger to older workers) rises, income and income aspirations diverge for the young. One possible extreme reaction to this disequilibrium is suicide. The model explains the variation in age- and sex-specific suicide rates for the United States over the period 1948 to 1976. It identifies the direct effect of changes in cohort size on suicide rates as well as the indirect effect operating through other demographic variables. The model predicts the suicide rates for males above 45 years of age to rise and those for all other groups to decline. For most groups this is a reversal of recent movements in their suicide rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes cross-cohort trends in the age pattern of women at first birth in the United States. The analysis involves fitting the Coale-McNeil marriage model to the age distribution of first birth frequencies for a number of recent white and nonwhite cohorts. Methodologically, the results (a) provide support for the application of the Coale-McNeil marriage model to first birth data, and (b) demonstrate the ability of the model to accurately project first birth fertility for cohorts which have yet to complete their childbearing years. Substantively the results indicate (a) that the proportion of women who will never have a first birth is increasing across cohorts and can be expected to be as high as .25 and .20 for recent white and nonwhite cohorts respectively; (b) that recent nonwhite cohorts have an appreciable number of first births at earlier ages than their white counterparts, as well as a lower mean age at first birth and increasingly less dispersion (across cohorts) in their age at first birth; and (c) that the mean age at first birth and the proportion of first births occurring between ages 25 and 34 is increasing across cohorts of white women but is stable across cohorts of nonwhite women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a long-term investigation known as the Mormon Historical Demography Project. It examines the capability of a simulation model, originally proposed by John Bongaarts (1976), to fit the natural fertility pattern which characterized the mid-nineteenth century Mormon population. Application of this model permits estimates to be made of the historical timing and age-incidence of fertility limitation. A sensitivity analysis of the model's parameters demonstrates that simple changes in the model's proximate determinants of fertility, excluding contraceptive practices, would be insufficient to account for later transition effects. Thus the results successfully capture the dynamics underlying the Mormon natural fertility pattern as well as offer a framework for future modeling of the transition away from natural fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work with samples of black and white urban American women showed a clear behavioral sequence relating age at menarche to age at first intercourse to age at first birth. This paper shows that the linking of ages at menarche, intercourse, marriage, and first birth is a pattern which occurs in very diverse cultures. We present confirmatory data from the United States, Belgium, and Pakistan, and from Malay and Chinese women in Malaysia. We interpret our findings as indicating a biological process leading to (a) social interpretations of readiness for reproduction, and (b) persisting biological differences between early and late maturing women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines determinants of timing of marriage for young women by modeling the transition from the single to the married state by age. This approach, combined with a large longitudinal data set, allows us to disaggregate the analysis into fine age groupings and to include situational and attitudinal factors in our model. We find that those characteristics of a young woman's parental family that reflect the availability of parental resources tend to decrease the chances of a marriage during the early teens. Chances of marrying appear to decrease with increases in the availability and attractiveness of alternatives to the wife role and in the costs of assuming it. We discuss these results from the perspective of the societal and parental normative pressures which affect timing of marriage for young women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While births may be dichotomous, fertility intentions are not inherently so. Intentions are predictions about the future and, as such, are couched in considerable uncertainty. Ignoring this uncertainty hides much of what could be learned from data on fertility intentions. This paper presents a model which allows analysis of the full range of intentions. This paper presents a model which allows analysis of the full range of intentions. After selecting a sample of women in the later stage of childbearing (e.g., those who intend fewer than two additional children) from the 1965 and 1970 National Fertility Studies, it is shown that: (1) substantial portions of women at this stage of the reproductive life cycle were indeed uncertain of their parity-specific intention; (2) this certainty, like more firm intentions, varies by age and parity as the model predicts; and (3) there were significant shifts in the level of certainty between 1965 and 1970. Specifically, while intentions for third, fourth, and fifth births declined, more women "didn't know" if they intended to have another child or not. Among those not intending another child, more seemed uncertain of this intention in 1970 than did comparable women in 1965. In contrast, those intending another child seemed more certain. These changes in intention and uncertainty indicate that the observed decline in intended parity was tentative. Post-1970 evidence suggests that this tentative decline has become an equivocal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and tests an age-sex standardized measure of household complexity, defined broadly as the tendency of adults (other than spouses) to head their own households or to share households. The aim is a measure of household complexity which can be computed with a minimum of demographic data, namely, data on number of households and on the population by age and sex. The procedure is similar to that of Coale for fertility measurement (Coale, 1969); it is a form of indirect standardization in which the actual number of households is related to the number that would exist if maximum age-sex-specific household headship rates were to apply. Various forms of this indirectly standardized measure show a correlation of better than 0.9 with directly standardized measures for a sample of 33 nations for which requisite data are available. The new measure promises to extend considerably the geographical and temporal range of comparable empirical measures of household complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines inter-provincial female migration in Chile for the 1965--1970 period, with a view to describing socioeconomic characteristics of migrant women and to determining differences and similarities in age, educational level, occupation, and type of move (first, return, or repeat) between movers to the capital and to other urban areas. Data are from a five percent sample of the 1970 Chilean census. Findings reveal that non-return migrants to other urban areas are differentiated from those to Santiago by an older age structure, higher educational levels, higher status occupations, and are more likely to be making a second (or higher-order) move. Moreover, educational measures suggest that recent female migration to urban Chile is more prevalent among the upper than the lower strata of the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces an analytic framework that can be used to assess the relationships between individual movement differentials and place characteristics, on the one hand, and aggregate mobility levels and city-suburb population change (in size or composition), on the other. Application of this framework using census data for individual metropolitan areas allows the analyst to decompose population changes due to net migration into contributing mobility streams and their component rates which are subject to unique community and individual influences. The paper provides both theoretical and empirical rationale for the framework, illustrates its use with 1970 census data, and discusses its implications for empirical research on city-suburb population redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the techniques of multiple decrement life tables to marriage histories collected as part of the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth, in an attempt to examine differences in pattern and level of marriage dissolution by marriage order. The paper considers the process of marriage dissolution in two stages--marriage to separation and separation to divorce--in addition to considering the composite of these two, marriage to divorce. Second marriages are more likely to reamin intact only for blacks. For all subgroups of whites, second marriages are either as likely or more likely to dissolve than first marriages. For both first and second marriages, blacks are considerably less likely to obtain a divorce after separation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing study of leaving home in young adulthood in the United States has been hampered by data and measurement problems, which are producing a major theoretical confusion about the role of parental resources in influencing young adults' leaving home. Does high parental income retain young adults in the home or subsidize their leaving (and parental privacy)? This paper uses the 1984 panel of Survey of Income and Program Participation to clarify this issue, and shows that the effects of parental resources differ depending on the route out of the home under consideration (marriage or premarital residential independence). Effects change substantially over the nest-leaving ages, but relatively few differences are found between young men and young women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author examines the proposition that heterogeneity in individual frailty leads to autocorrelation in cohort mortality rates. A simple model is used to construct analytic expressions for the covariance of cohort mortality rates at different ages under a number of alternative assumptions about the stochastic process generating shocks in mortality. The model then is used to construct a procedure that uses correlations in cohort mortality rates to estimate the extent of heterogeneity in a population without relying on strong assumptions about the distribution of frailty or the shape of the underlying hazard. The procedure then is used to show that cohort mortality data from France are consistent with a generalized random-effects model in which frailty is gamma-distributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use vital registration data published since 1979 to update trends in the timing of first births. Two important trends are documented. First, the likelihood that childless women over age 30 will have a first birth has increased since the 1970s. This change shows that women born in the 1950s are "catching up" on fertility postponed at younger ages. Second, racial differences in the timing of first births are very large. For those born in the 1950s, nonwhites have first births much earlier, and far fewer nonwhite than white women will remain permanently childless. In the second part of the paper, we use these data for recent years to assess earlier projections of childlessness based on cohort and period approaches. We also assess the accuracy of stated intentions to have no children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed record of the number and characteristics of persons in poverty is available since 1959. This paper provides measures for 1939 and 1949 that correspond as closely as possible to the official poverty statistics. Poverty, as officially measured, fell from 40.5 percent of all persons in 1949 to 13.1 percent in 1979, declining most among the elderly and least among female-headed households. We estimate the effects on the aggregate poverty rate of changes between 1940 and 1980 in the distribution of the population by selected demographic characteristics of household heads and by the employment status of head and spouse. Some changes, such as the increasing proportion of two-earner families, were poverty reducing, whereas others were poverty increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the probabilities of first marriage dissolution in Canada, using the marital history data collected from a national sample of women in their reproductive years. It is found that age at marriage, year of marriage, cohabitation before marriage, a premarital birth or conception, urban-rural place of residence, and religiosity are all significantly correlated with marriage dissolution. Religion and education, on the other hand, do not seem to affect the marriage dissolution probabilities when other factors are controlled. Canadian patterns are not too different from patterns in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of individual development and historical change on marital dissolution. Data from the vital statistics system of the United States and from the June 1980 Current Population Survey are used to examine the experience of marriage cohorts from 1905 through 1975 and the periods from 1922 through 1979. The historical patterns can best be explained as effects of period rather than of birth or marriage cohort, and the individual patterns can be explained best as effects of age and age at marriage rather than of marital duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survival analysis can be used to study the association between a set of explanatory variables and the age at which an event of interest, say weaning, occurs. As retrospectively reported age data often contain serious reporting errors, many analysts prefer to use current status data. In this paper, the authors discuss two approaches to fitting survival models to current status data from the Pakistan Fertility Survey. A generalized linear model approach, using constrained maximum likelihood estimates, proves computationally expensive, so a transformation of the baseline hazard is modeled, using spline function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A positive association between age of puberty and age of first coitus has been documented in several female populations; less is known about that relationship among males. This paper explores the subject among 1,134 male and female high school students in an inner-city, black population. Using age at first wet dream and age at menarche as markers, it tests hypotheses relating social, normative, and individual maturational pressures to intercourse; results suggest that biological pressures are strongest for early maturers. Data collected by self-administered questionnaires from 9th-12th graders are utilized. Implications for programs and research, nationally and internationally, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper has been to examine the age patterns of Indian women at marriage, cohabitation, and first birth. This task is complicated by features of the Indian marriage institution that differentiate it from the institution of marriage in Western cultures. It is also complicated by the diversity of Indian marriage customs and by the possibility that Indian marriage patterns have changed over time. Nevertheless, our analysis of survey data for two districts in south central India support the following conclusions: Marriage and childbearing have been and continue to be universal. The timing of marriage and childbearing, which showed only a small increase over a fairly long period of time, appears more recently to be undergoing some changes in the direction of longer delays. The significant rural-urban differences in marriage and fertility timing are at least partly the result of the greater impact of education on age at marriage, cohabitation, and first birth in urban areas than in rural areas. Observed characteristics such as religion and education explain more variation in women's marriage and fertility timing in urban areas than in rural areas (i.e., education seems to generate new social norms that tend to displace norms derived from tradition. The incidence of childhood marriages and two-stage marriages has been on the decline, causing the small but noticeable rise in age at marriage to exceed somewhat the increase in age at cohabitation. Age patterns of marriage in India do not closely resemble Western patterns, although age patterns of cohabitation and first birth do. And socioeconomic variables appear to explain less variation in marriage and fertility timing within local communities than across communities. Most important, the results highlight the need for more recent and richer data on marriage and fertility behavior in India. In particular, they strongly suggest that marriage patterns in India are now in the midst of major changes. This conclusion is similar to that reached by Caldwell, Reddy, and Caldwell (1983), who adopted a more qualitative approach to analyzing marriage change than ours, but whose observations are also more recent than ours. Through the collection and analysis of more recent and geographically widespread data, we can begin to assess more fully the nature and magnitude of the demographic changes under way and speculate on their implications for population growth, economic development, and the formulation of public policy in India.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first national estimates of current fecundity status of women of all marital statuses indicate that, in 1982, about 5.1 million women were unable to have a future birth but would have liked to. About 2.7 million had difficulty bearing children, and the other 2.4 million were surgically sterile for noncontraceptive reasons. Since 1965, infertility was unchanged overall and in most age groups, but increased among wives aged 20-24. This paper explores a number of methodological and substantive questions related to reproductive impairments, such as the frequency of intercourse, the duration of infertility, and the possible causes of trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results reported here show that the stage of an individual's life cycle not only has direct effects on the likelihood of migration, but also establishes a context within which the motives to migrate are evaluated and acted upon. One contextual impact of the life cycle concerns the effects of length of residence on migration. The results show that the probability of migrating declines more rapidly over time for married males with children than for singles males--i.e., the difference between the likelihood of migration for single males and married males with children widens with increasing length of residence. Much of this difference may be due to the greater number and strength of community ties for individuals who are married with children. These ties are not well developed at the beginning of a residence but continue to strengthen over the course of a residence. In addition, there are variations in the levels of job rewards and location-specific resources across the life cycle and there are two variations across the early life cycle in the effects of independent variables on the initial rate of migration. One resource (self-employment) and one job reward (prestige) have different effects for single individuals than for either group of married males. If the span of the life cycle considered in this analysis were broadened to include older men, additional differences in the effects of independent variables might be uncovered. In research with cross-sectional data containing a wider range of ages than the data used here, Heaton et al. (1981) found that economic variables were more important in determining the migration of younger individuals than that of older individuals, whereas noneconomic factors were more important determinants of the migration of older than of younger individuals. The results of this paper and Heaton's results suggest that at different stages of life people use a somewhat different "subjective cost-benefit calculus" in making migration decisions. The importance of certain migration determinants may vary significantly depending on whether an individual is married, whether he or she has children, and/or whether he or she is in the labor force or retired. Additional research on these issues could greatly contribute to our understanding of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of female socioeconomic activities on cumulative fertility is a product of a series of life cycle stages, including the initiation of marriage and the timing of subsequent births. In the present paper, the effects of premarital socioeconomic roles on the first stages of family formation-the timing of marriage and the interval between marriage and first birth-are analyzed. Modern socioeconomic roles, especially educational attainment, lead to a postponement of marriage, and thereby age at first birth. However, the same variables tend to have a counter- balancing effect by reducing the interval from marriage to the first birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents estimates of delayed childbearing and permanent childlessness in the United States and the determinants of those phenomena. The estimates are derived by fitting the Coale-McNeil marriage model to survey data on age at first birth and by letting the parameters of the model depend on covariates. Substantively, the results provide evidence that the low first birth fertility rates experienced in the 1970s were due to both delayed childbearing and to increasing levels of permanent childlessness. The results also indicate that (a) delayed childbearing is less prevalent among black women than among nonblack women; (b) education is an important determinant of delayed childbearing whose influence on this phenomenon seems to be increasing across cohorts; (c) education is positively associated with heterogeneity among women in their age at first birth; (d) the dispersion of age at first birth is increasing across cohorts; (e) race has an insignificant effect on childlessness; and (f) education is positively associated with childlessness, with the effect of education increasing and reaching strikingly high levels for the most recent cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of social change and economic growth on intergenerational relationships and the formation of families in Taiwan. Using data from two island-wide surveys in 1973 and 1980, the analysis shows that, as expected, social change has been accompanied by rapid changes in family structure and relationships, including the spread of schooling, the employment of young people outside the family, increasing separation of the residences of parents and children before and after marriage, growing independence of young people, and increases in premarital sex and pregnancies. The position of a family in the social structure also influences the way young people interact with their parents and form their own families: women with educated fathers have more nonfamilial experiences than others, and farm origins tend to exert a traditional influence on the life course. Finally, experiences early in the life course have important ramifications for later behavior and transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the mismatch between occupation and schooling attainment, the imbalance between occupation-specific demand for labor and schooling-level-specific labor supply. A framework for measuring the prevalence of mismatch is given, and a simple index derived from it gives plausible results and robust inferences about differentials and time trend. This approach can be applied to existing data, yields comprehensive and current social indicators, and can be used with a minimum number of assumptions. Trends for the U.S. labor force over the 1969-1980 interval are examined. Results show that there has been a dramatic and general increase in mismatch prevalence. Various demographic explanations of mismatch trends are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There was an increase from 62.8 to 79.1 million households in the United States during the 1970s. The number of households increased much more rapidly than the population. This paper decomposes this growth in the number of households into components associated with changing age and martial status composition and changing age by marital status-specific propensities to form households. About one-third of the increase in the number of households was due to increased age by marital status propensity to form households, and two-thirds was due to shifts in the age by marital status distribution and population growth. The increased propensity to form households had its major impact at ages under 35, and primarily among never-married persons. The composition component had its primary impact at ages 25-44 as a result of the baby boom, and also because of the increased fractions never married and separated and divorced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary populations frequently space the births of children, and also attempt to stop childbearing after achieving a desired family size. While stopping behavior was evident in European populations in the late nineteenth century, little is known about the degree to which they attempted to space their children at specific interval lengths. This paper compares spacing patterns among various groups of white U.S. women in 1900, who were distinguished by varying family sizes and levels of fertility control. On the whole, there is little evidence of childspacing differences among native white populations, except for some very low parity women. The findings support the continued analysis of age patterns of fertility as the major means for determining the onset of conscious family limitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple method for estimating a birth rate and a level of mortality for an intercensal period. The birth rate is estimated from the intercept of a line fitted to data and the level of mortality from the slope of that line. The formula that is developed is based upon a recent generalization of stable population relations. An estimate of childhood mortality level is an optional but significant piece of additional input. An important by-product of the procedure is an estimate of the true age distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the various types of mortality, motor vehicle fatalities (MVF) and suicides are two that are very responsive to social, economic, and psychological factors. The analysis of the temporal patterns of suicides and MVF points to important but neglected forces affecting them. This paper examines the daily patterns of MVF and suicides for the United States from 1972 to 1976. The effects of the day of the week, month, year, and holidays on these types of mortality are estimated. Total MVF and suicides, as well as daily differentials by sex, age, and race, are analyzed with regression techniques. The results show that temporal variations are stronger in MVF than in suicides but are present in both. MVF tend to peak on Saturday, in the summer months, in 1972 and 1973, and on holidays. Suicides are generally highest on Monday, in the spring months, in 1975 and 1976, and on nonholidays. Differentials in the temporal patterns are evident. For instance, whites generally have a sharper decline in suicides on holidays than do nonwhites. The holiday peak in MVF for the 60 and over population is Christmas, while it is New Year's for the younger age groups. Males exhibit a greater increase in suicides from March to May than do females. Finally, the results of a comparison of the daily patterns of MVF and suicides revealed a negative correlation. This contrasted with the strong positive relationship between MVF and suicides generally found in cross-sectional studies. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing data from a fifteen-year follow-up survey of high school students originally surveyed in 1957-58 and resurveyed in 1973-74, this paper examines the effects of the timing of marriage and first birth on subsequent childspacing, holding constant the effects of other variables that may be sources of spuriousness. The results suggest that age at first marriage has a causal effect on the occurrence of a short first birth interval and that age at first marriage and premarital pregnancy interact in their effect on the occurrence of a short second birth interval. Age at first marriage has no causal effect on the spacing of the second birth for those whose first child was maritally conceived. The spacing of the first birth, however, appears to have a causal effect on the spacing of the second. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the utility of viewing migration in the context of work careers and family life cycles. We do this by studying migration as a discrete state, continuous time process. We find that the inverse relationship between age and migration is due almost completely to the effects of family life cycle and work career variables. Further, we find that job- or location-specific resources, prestige and wage deter migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognizing that postwar trends in family size derive both from changes in the living arrangements of adults and from changes in the presence of children, this paper develops annual estimates of mean family size, mean members less than 18, and mean members 18 and older by race, by family type, and by age of head. Group differences in the course and source of changes in family size are evident as anticipated on the basis of group differences in family structure, economic resources and life cycle stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "two-sex problem" is one of attempting to preserve the essential character of male and female rates of marriage (or birth), since the expression of those rates is influenced both by the age-sex composition of the population and the underlying age-sex schedule of preferences. The present paper focuses on marriage and advances a theoretically based, realistic, and conceptually simple solution. In the continuous case, where exact male and female ages are used, equation (11) provides a mathematical relationship which equates the sum of the male and female marriage propensities of the observed population with that of the model. When discrete age intervals are used, the two-sex consistency condition is given by equation (14) which equates observed and model population rates calculated using the harmonic means of the number of persons in the relevant male and female age groups. The harmonic mean consistency condition is shown to be fully sensitive to the competitive nature of the "marriage market." When compared with alternative approaches to the two-sex problem in the context of data for Sweden, 1961-64, the simple harmonic mean method yields results fairly similar to those of the other methods. None of the two-sex methods do particularly well at predicting the actual distribution of marriages, however. The likely reason is that the underlying marriage preferences changed, a circumstance which emphasizes the importance of carefully conceptualizing how observed behavior can be decomposed into the effects produced by age-sex composition and those produced by the underlying preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some main results of an investigation by life table methods of birth interval data in cohabitational unions (marriages as well as consensual unions) in current Danish cohorts. Our results confirm previous findings that an early age at the start of recorded exposure to childbearing risk is indicative of a rapid pace and high level of subsequent fertility. The analysis modifies previous results and adds several new details regarding cohort trends and the effect of parity at the start of reported cohabitation. For each parity within a period of cohabitation, fertility differentials by reported starting age seem to have diminished from our older cohorts (of age up to 49 years in 1975) to our younger ones (of age less than 30 years in 1975). There are indications of a dramatic change in childbearing behaviour following the arrival of novel attitudes to non-marital cohabitation and childbearing in Denmark about 1967. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an attempt to determine, through the use of demographic analysis, the approximate magnitude of the resident illegal alien population in the United States. The method described is the comparative analysis of trends in age-specific death rates in the United States and selected States, 1950 to 1975. The procedure depends on two assumptions: (a) that few or no illegal aliens are included in decennial census counts or current population estimates; and (b) that the reported statistics on deaths include deaths to all or nearly all illegal aliens. If the illegal alien population has increased by several million since 1970, then death rates in geographic areas where illegal aliens are most concentrated should show substantial excesses over the rates for the remainder of the country. A roughly similar downward trend in the death rates of all age groups since 1970 in all areas of the United States is apparent and hence does not support the view that many millions of illegal residents (perhaps over 6 million) are living here. However, the finding of a persistent deviation in the death rate trend for 10 selected States since 1960 for whites males, ages 20 to 44, and for no other group, suggests that the deaths of illegal aliens are being recorded in our vital statistics system. A range of estimates of the illegal alien population based on this analysis is presented and compared with the results of other studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To influence the number of children ever born to a woman, socioeconomic variables must operate through behavioral and biological mechanisms such as the age at marriage, the level of fertility in the absence of deliberate fertility control, and the level of control exerted to reduce fertility within marriage. In this paper, we propose a new measure of cumulative fertility which is standardized for the age-fecundity relationship and for exposure to the risk of conception associated with duration of marriage. A simple model of fertility behavior which incorporates some of the mechanisms through which socioeconomic factors may affect fertility is developed and applied to data from the United States to demonstrate the properties of alternative measures of family size. The results indicate that use of the new measure allows more precise estimates of socioeconomic fertility relationships than would be obtained with children ever born or by sample stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses vital statistics data from 15 states in the Divorce Registration Area to decompose into age-specific components the rise in the aggregate divorce rate between 1960 and 1974. While women in their twenties comprise only about 20 percent of the married population, they appear to have contributed over 60 percent of the growth in the divorce rate during the decade of the sixties, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major goals of family planning programs worldwide has been to reduce the level of fertility in hopes of slowing the rate of natural increase and promoting social and economic development. Such programs have now been in existence for sufficient lengths of time to have had an impact on fertility levels. In general countries with organized family planning programs, marked declines in fertility levels have been observed. The extent to which such declines may be credited to organized programs has not been rigorously measured because an appropriate research methodology has been lacking. This paper describes one method of directly linking declines in fertility levels to the contraceptive protection experienced by a population. The contribution of organized family planning programs is estimated by decomposing the amount of total contraceptive protection into within-program and outside-program sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]