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Many studies have suggested that unmarried adolescent childbearing is becoming a social problem in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa, because it tends to lead to school drop-outs, illegal abortions, and child abandonment. To date, the motivations for adolescent childbearing remain poorly understood. One point of view is that unmarried adolescent childbearing results from a breakdown of social controls by the elders over young people. Others have argued that adolescent childbearing is a form of rational adaptation; a means to achieve a specific goal. For example, girls may choose to become pregnant if they believe that a pregnancy will lead to marriage. In this paper adolescent sexual activity and premarital childbearing in seven sub-Saharan African countries are examined with data from Demographic and Health Surveys. In a first section, the impact of socio-economic indicators on adolescent sexual and reproductive behaviour is examined; a subsequent section is focused on the motivation for different types of adolescent behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between women's status and fertility in two regions of rural Bangladesh. Based on individual and household-level survey data, women's status is measured through four constructs. The covariates of these four aspects of women's status vary considerably and confirm the view that women's status is conceptually and operationally complex. For all aspects, however, variation between villages accounts for the largest share of explainable variance. Proxy measures of status do not provide uniform relationships with all facets of status. Further, the paper shows that women's status is an important determinant of fertility; of the variance in total children ever born that can be explained by factors other than age, nearly 30 per cent is due to direct measures of women's status; this is as much as can be explained by all other socio-economic variables combined. Thus, models of fertility that rely solely on proxy measures of women's status will be underspecified. In addition, measurement of women's status that does not account for the bias that women's status and fertility are simultaneously determined in patriarchal societies will misstate the direction, and underestimate the effects, of status on fertility. Lastly, different dimensions of women's status influence fertility differently - in terms of magnitude, direction and statistical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes patterns of immigration and absorption of immigrants. The process of immigration is a process of physical transition from one society to another involving considerable frustrations and giving rise to many social problem among immigrants. The research is conducted with assumptions that there are three main interdependent indices of adaptation and assimilation of immigrants within their new country : institutional integration, acculturation, and personal adjustment and integration of immigrants. The research paper examines some of these implicit assumptions in order to estimate their importance for a framework of comparative analysis, and suggests such a tentative framework. The paper then attempts to apply this framework to the analysis of concrete cases of migration and assimilation of immigrants. The types of pluralistic structures arising through the absorption of immigrants are determined by the immigrants' own motivations, by the demands made on them by the absorbing society, and by the possibilities open to them in that society.

This paper offers an empirical and analytic foundation for regarding period life expectancy as a lagged indicator of the experience of real cohorts in populations experiencing steady improvement in mortality. We find that current period life expectancy in the industrialized world applies to cohorts born some 40-50 years ago. Lags track an average age at which future years of life are being gained, in a sense that we make precise. Our findings augment Ryder's classic results on period-cohort translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes core innovations in the strategy of research on demographic behaviour. One aim is a shift of attention away from events and towards a focus on dynamic processes and their interplay: away from a preoccupation with marriage and divorce, births, deaths, migrations, and household structure towards a broader perspective that takes account of partnership and intimacy, parenthood, potential and well-being, position in society and space, and personal ties. Another aim is a much closer engagement with genetics, neuroscience, psychology, and behavioural economics. A third aim is a strategy that pays more attention to pathways within the individual, to the processes entailed when the individual interacts with various contexts, and to progressions that involve the interplay of the pathways and processes through the life course. These shifts of emphasis, which have already begun to occur, require a systematic reassessment of priorities for research on demographic behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative family sociology has had little to say about the Latin American family or household despite it links to a European colonial culture mixed with a distinct set of indigenous and historical circumstances. In this paper tentative judgements are put forward about the similarities and differences between the Western and Latin American household by examining four of its dimensions: the household's relative complexity, the separate residence of conjugal units, the incidence of households headed by women, and the incidence of household members being unrelated to the head. Data come from the World Fertility Survey household files gathered during the middle 1970s in six countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Peru. We find that household complexity in the six countries is intermediate between that of the West and East. Many of the households are extended laterally instead of vertically, because conjugal couples tend to reside in separate households, but often live with unmarried relatives as well. In addition, a high level of marital instability results in a significant proportion of households headed by women, many of them containing members of the extended family. Finally, whereas the circulation of young unmarried people of both sexes was common in rural areas in the West, being an unrelated individual in another's household is most common in urban areas among females between 15 and 19 years old. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Arabs are frequently characterized as possessing a harem of veiled and secluded wives, relatively little is actually known about the extent of polygyny among them. In this paper we present an examination of the levels and trends of polygyny in Arab countries in North Africa and Western Asia. The data are obtained primarily from the population censuses of 13 countries, and the registration records of marriage contracts for several countries. The period covers roughly the last three decades. These data also permit the analysis on a longitudinal basis for some countries, of differentials in polygyny by age, urban-rural residence, education, occupation and employment status. A number of findings of this study differ from commonly held views about polygynous Arab marriages. For example, the practice appears to be neither extensive nor uniform throughout the Arab countries. In addition, the trend in its prevalence varies between different countries. While in some countries the practice is decreasing, in others it seems to be increasing and in still others it has remained unchanged. The implications of the findings are discussed and suggestions are offered for areas of further research on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardly anything is known about the demography of East Malaysia, that is of the lesser developed regions of Sabah and Sarawak, because of the wide range of deficiencies in the available data. This paper uses a range of indirect methods to construct a demographic profile of Sabah and Sarawak over the period 1960 to 1980. Comparisons are made between these areas and Peninsular Malaysia and some overall Malaysian estimates are given. The study suggests that between 1965 and 1980 there were large gains in life expectancy among the indigenous communities in Sabah and Sarawak, although their life expectancies are still shorter than those of the Chinese. Differentials in life chances between these regions and Peninsular Malaysia narrowed appreciably during the 1970s. Over the same period there were falls in levels of fertility. These were most spectacular among the Chinese communities and the groups living in and around the urban areas in Sarawak. There has been some decline in fertility among the indigenous groups in Sabah but current levels remain higher than among the indigenous groups in Sarawak and the Malays in the Peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of children born during marital dissolution on the probabilities and timing of women's divorce and remarriage and explore whether the new children and those already present modify each other's effects on these outcomes. In studying the influence of post-marital childbearing on the probabilities of divorce and remarriage, an unexamined but significant problem in the area of marriage and childbearing. The present paper also provide an illustration of an application of this useful new technique. The impact of children on the processes of divorce and remarriage is an important topic for research. Both the effects of children living at the time of the dissolution of the marriage and the effects of those born to women while separated or divorced are important, as each has significant but different implications for the process of family formation. Previous researchers, however, have either examined only the impact of children already born at the time of breakdown or have not distinguished between these children and those born after the dissolution. Children are born to parents whose marriages have broken down relatively frequently in the United States. Data collected in 1970 showed that the probability of a birth within 48 months of separation or widowhood was 0.26. Although the post-marital birth rate has since decreased, it remains substantial. Because of the sharp increase in divorce rates after 1970 and a recent apparent delay in remarriage, more women will remain in a martially disrupted state for a longer period.

The essence of freedom consists in the absence of restraint and an election or any other concrete instance of choosing is generally deemed to have been free if each voter had an unrestricted choice between several alternatives, of which not casting a vote may have been one. This approach is objective because it is based on "post factum" data reflecting actual behaviour in a given situation and it is statistical in so far as the analysis embraces the decisions taken by the full membership of the selected group. But diversity alone does not necessarily indicate the absence of restraint, because variety can be enforced just as effectively as uniformity. If, for example, the actual statistical spread of the choices can be traced back to the definite orders of an authority, the actual freedom displaced is nil. There are also instances where, though the factor itself is unavoidable, its consequences are not. Take sex, for instance, as a determinant of choice of profession. Whereas it is hardly a practical proposition to alter the sex of a girl who wants to pursue a profession at present reserved to males, it would not be impossible to throw all professions open to both sexes.

This article presents list of books received by the journal "Population Studies." Some of the books are "Mexican and Central American Population and U.S. Immigration Policy," edited by Frank D. Bean, Jurgen Schmandt and Sideny Weintraub, "A Case for Promoting Breastfeeding in Projects to Limit Fertility," by Alan Berg and Susan Brems, "Adapting Social Security to the Emerging Needs of a Changing Society," "The Flexibility of Retirement Age," "India's Historical Demography," edited by Tim Dyson, "Women As Mothers in Pre-Industrial England," edited by Valerie Fidles, "Pregnancy, Contraception and Family Planning Services in Industrialized Countries," by Aida Torres, "Urban Population Development in Western Europe From the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century," edited by Richard Lawton and Robert Lee, "Reproduction and Social Organization in Sub-Saharan Africa," edited by Ron J. Lesthaeghe, "Women and Population Dynamics" edited by K. Mahadevan, "The New Politics of Welfare. An Agenda for the 1990s?," edited by Michael McCarthy, and others.

A population's growth potential is significantly underestimated by conventional calculations of population momentum which assume an immediate drop to replacement level fertility. Here we assume that the growth rate of births linearly declines to zero over a specified time interval, and find simple and intuitively meaningful expressions for the size of the ultimate birth cohort and the resultant population momentum. In particular, we find that the increase in the number of births over the transition is equal to growth at the initial rate for half the time needed to attain a constant birth level. Thus our formula readily calculates the growth potential of a population under a gradual approach to stationarity without the need for a numerical projection. Calculations for actual and hypothetical populations are presented to show the demographic impact of such gradual approaches to zero growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews half a century of research into the determinants of fertility. It is argued that the quest for the determinants of fertility behaviour and change during that period can best be interpreted as the development of a series of sub-narratives from different disciplinary perspectives and orientations. These are normally based upon the initial narrative of the demographic transition and usually take the form of a verbal theory illustrated by a 'box and arrow' diagram. On occasions formalization has been attempted. Different parts of the initial narrative have been highlighted at different times depending on policy interest, improvements in technical skills, availability of data, changes in social setting, and the degree of satisfaction with the dominant sub-narrative of the day. There is every reason to believe that the research process identified will continue and will lead to a further accumulation of knowledge. In fact, all important variables have probably already been identified. That it will, ultimately, lead to a single, consolidated narrative fully satisfactory for all settings and for all time is, however, highly unlikely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a response by the author on the comments of sociologist W.C. Robinson's on his article related to fertility, published in the journal Population Studies. The author says that notably, his analysis of fertility in Bangladesh has led him to conclude that one should not expect the security motive for having children to vary substantially within rural areas, and, consequently, given current levels of infant and child mortality, one should not expect fertility to vary systematically across region or economic class. Fertility may vary systematically for other reasons, but not because of the security motive. As important as this conclusion, the underlying logic also seems to have escaped Robinson. Robinson may not agree with this position, but it does not serve the purpose of constructive debate for him to pretend that my position is different. This he does most gratingly in the second half of his comment where he formulates various empirical tests of the proposition. Robinson is puzzled by the proposition that children could provide insurance against risk.

In this paper a new method for the analysis of household formation and the composition of households is described. The components, or building blocks, which combine to form households are identified and these have been called `minimal household units' The focus of the analysis is on whether a minimal household unit sets up as a separate household or, if not, with whom it is shared. An economic theory of household formation is outlined, and a probit model is used to guide the estimation of the effects of economic and demographic characteristics of the minimal household unit on the probability of being a separate household, economic factors, such as the unit's income, and other social and demographic characteristics of the unit's members are shown to have a significant influence on the probability of its being a separate household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their pioneer work "Social Mobility in Britain" the authors describe as one of their main objects "an assessment of the amount and direction of social mobility in Great Britain since the end of the nineteenth century." The authors define three points on the scale of intensity of association: "Complete association," which occurs when all sons have the same social status as their fathers; "perfect association," existing when all sons, whatever the status of their parents, have equal chance of reaching a given status category; and "complete dissociation," which occurs when all sons have a status different from their fathers. Neither perfect nor complete association are likely to occur in practice. Consequently, the authors of the symposium propose to assess and interpret social mobility with the aid of the three indices and the tests of significance based upon them. The conclusions reached in the symposium may be correct. They are, however, given no support by the heavy statistical framework, unless the authors choose to define association in terms of the index.

This paper attempts to define the field of demography, identify the demographer, assess the extent to which demography is a social science and relate it to the other social sciences. It examines how changes in the outside world affect what demographers do and what they publish. As befits Population Studies's 50th anniversary, the role of journals, and especially of this journal is examined. The early role of the journal and of its longtime two editors in defining the field is discussed. The interface between demography and the other social sciences is examined, as is the extent to which demographers publish in journals other than specialist population ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the importance of economic activity, economic potential and economic resources for the timing of first births in Norway. Changes in the aggregate number of births are determined both by the quantum and tempo of fertility at the individual level. Previous research has identified a number of factors that seem to have a bearing on the timing of parenthood. Above all, the woman's education has generally been found to be a very important determinant of the timing of first births, as well as lifetime fertility. Its importance may even have increased during the last few decades. Recent German research has shown that the delayed first births among the better-educated are largely linked with continuing educational activity, whereas a higher educational level has no net inhibiting effect on first birth rates. Little is known about the impact of work experience on the timing of entry into motherhood. This is a subject of growing importance, because of the continuing high level of youth unemployment in much of the industrialized world. Results from previous empirical studies have been contradictory, and the few attempts that have been made to gain theoretical insight have not provided strong predictions.

The risk of marriage breakdown for teenage brides is substantially greater than for women who marry later. From the life histories of a British cohort born in 1946, we show that teenage brides frequently come from less advantageous family backgrounds, have received less education and are in occupations of a lower status than those who marry later. Such pre-marital factors did not distinguish between teenage marriages that survived and those that broke down by the time the women were in their early thirties. Antecedent factors associated with higher risk of marital breakdown were marital breakdown in the family of origin and, more importantly, neuroticism score at age 16. Women whose marriages broke down were less stable, even before they married, than those whose marriages remained intact. Conditions after marriage also distinguish broken marriages from surviving marriages. Women with short first birth intervals and greater numbers of children were more frequently found in the group with broken marriages. Additionally, buying one's own home and higher incomes appear to be constraints on marriage breakdown. Generally, the results suggest that the factors which have a more direct bearing on marriage breakdown are conditions after marriage and latent characteristics such as personality type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on social realism and the contribution of social scientists Gregory King and Robert Malthus. Social opacity is not itself a simple phenomenon. Several element; can be discerned within it, often only partially distinct from each other. There is, as we have just seen, the unwillingness to recognize what is already known, or the desire to overlook it. There is the deliberate decision not to meddle with certain topics which could be explored. There are the barriers to knowledge set up by those who have an interest in perpetuating ignorance, and class influences of other kinds. There are ideological obstacles to the discovery and communication of information coming from established beliefs and assumptions, cultural and often specifically religious. In addition the means of discovery, record and communication may be lacking, and simple inertia, or conservatism may stand in the way of their introduction, indeed in the way of admitting any new thing. In the two centuries which included the lifetimes of King and Malthus all these influences and circumstances must have interfered with social perception and social structural exploration. But the factors mentioned later in our list must presumably have been more formidable then than they have been since.

The article focuses on the Canadian sample for labour force and other population data. The collection of statistical data by sampling rather than by supposedly complete enumeration is today a liberating force in all-quantitative work. Its advantages in the study of problems of population are especially great and are rapidly becoming apparent in several broad directions. Apart from the registration of births and deaths, which is important from a civil as well as from a statistical point of view, most of the population data in the past have in fact been obtained from the compilations of the census taker. Censuses have usually been separated by 10 or at least 5-year periods, the long interval between the time to which the data refer and the time at which they are released, often give them an interest which is largely historical, the questions tend of necessity to be confined to a more or less familiar set, suggested variations or additions to which must all too often be rejected as unwieldy or too expensive. With sampling, on the other hand, surveys can be carried out on a smaller scale, and hence more flexibly, the field is wide open for experimentation with new questions which are both more detailed and more meaningful than those which can be included in a census.

This article focuses on age at marriage and marital fertility. The erratic behaviour of gross and net reproduction rates during the last ten years, in nearly every country for which they are available, has led to some suspicion of them as the best possible measurement of the trend of reproductivity. Suspicion gives place to systematic and penetrating criticism in researcher J. Hajnal's article in the September 1947 issue of Population Studies. The article shows the weakness of gross and net reproduction rates, as hitherto calculated, not only during war years, but also in any period of marked change. It is not possible to give a comprehensive bibliography of what is now a rapidly growing literature on the subject of marital fertility. The essence of the technique is to collect fertility data specific not for the age of woman but also for the duration of marriage. By summing such a series researchers can measure the reproductivity of a typical marriage, or of a population in which the numbers and durations of marriages are given by any required assumption.

As a result of the growing concern over rapid population growth in the world, more studies are being made of the practice of family limitation. Generally, such studies rely on the technique of survey research. However, far too little information exists about the reliability of responses about family planning as collected by the interview. In connection, this article is concerned with another type of reliability, namely, the consistency of responses given by the same respondents asked identical questions at two different times. And in relation with the Family Growth in Metropolitan America study, a longitudinal survey being conducted by the Office of Population Research of Princeton University, a sample of Indian mothers is initially interviewed shortly after a second birth and then re-interviewed three years later.

This article seeks to explore fertility, social mobility and urban migration in Brazil. In the course of a sample survey of the adult population of eight cities in south-central Brazil conducted in 1959 and early 1960, material was obtained respecting total family size after ten or more years of marriage. This was analyzed in order to determine what variations in mean family size could be observed in relation to class status and social mobility. The results show that fertility is inversely related to class status, and that for a given class, the lower the class of origin, the higher the fertility. A tentative estimate suggests that the net effect of social mobility had been to reduce the sample's total births by something of the order of 3 per cent.

This article deliberates on the relationship between social mobility and fertility in teachers. R. A. Fisher in 1930 attributed the decline of ancient civilizations to the promotion to the ruling class of people who owed their mobility to relative infertility. Their failure to reproduce themselves caused the disintegration of their respective empires. Pre-war studies of the interrelationship between social mobility and fertility were either theoretical or, if actual data were collected, referred to limited populations. The more general application after 1940 of large scale sampling methods to human populations resulted in a series of field studies of the problem. Some of these provided direct evidence while others threw light on the association of both social mobility and fertility with common variables such as education. In 1955, material was collected at the Institute of Education, University of London, to study the social characteristics of teachers in grant-earning schools in England and Wales. The study provided data on both family of origin and procreation of a social group well known for the proportion of upwardly mobile persons it contains. Only minor adjustments were needed to render the data suitable for studying the relationship between fertility and social mobility of this group.

This article presents information about the book "The Facts of Life," by C.D. Darling. The facts in this book are the complex processes of reproduction and heredity. Its theme is that all aspects of life are bound up with these processes and with the notions which people have about them. Its motive power is the author's conviction that an appreciation of modern knowledge in these areas is lacking among those who deal with "the great problems of society-- of education, of medicine, of crime and punishment, of marriage and divorce, of the relations of races and classes and, taking a long view, of evolution." He is convinced that, instead, ancient and modern superstitions dominate sociological thought; and that, therefore, a need exists to tell men the facts mentioned in the book. More than one half of the book is given to a history of thought and experiment on reproduction, evolution and heredity. In the second large section of the book, "Man and Woman," the main intention of the author is fulfilled. It is asserted that genetic determination of man for the totality of his traits is the basic fact of life. "Heredity does determine the hormone system, and the hormone system does control growths temperament and intelligence."

Present knowledge of population characteristics and trends in many parts of the world is seriously defective, when compared with the minimum needs for even the most elementary demographic analysis. The deficiencies are especially serious in the countries of Africa and Asia, and to a lesser extent in those of Latin America. Very many of the countries in these regions have had either no population census at all in recent decades, or only censuses known to be grossly deficient in coverage. Only a few of them have census data on sex and age of the population which can meet mild tests of accuracy and of sufficiency for analytical studies. Yet in these regions the census is almost universally the only source of information about population trends, for statistics of births and deaths are usually either totally lacking or too incomplete for use in this connexion. The population censuses which are being taken in 1950 or planned in 1951 for a great many countries will undoubtedly make an important improvement in this situation. But the extent of the improvement, with reference to the statistically backward regions, may be disappointing unless greater care is taken in these censuses than in previous ones to obtain data which are accurate enough, broad enough in coverage and tabulated in enough detail to satisfy the most important needs for analysis. Such methods as careful verification in selected sample areas of the completeness of enumeration and accuracy of returns, especially on such important subjects as sex and age of the people, would ensure the maximum product of usable statistics. The need for such improvement is shown in this article by an analysis of the census statistics obtained in each country having 1,000,000 or more population between 1919 and 1949. Tables are presented showing the availability of essential data on population size, growth and structure with reference to sex and age groups for each country, together with the results of simple tests of the completeness and accuracy of the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]