Male-female literacy differential in India--1981

The author examines inequalities in the literacy rates between males and females in India. Regional variations in literacy are examined by district using maps. "The male-female literacy differential is low in coastal, peripheral and metropolitan areas and is high in inland and mountainous areas. These regional disparities are the product of differences in length of educational background, age at marriage, level of urbanisation, standard of living and proportion of socially conservative and backward sections of society.... The study in spatial dimension provides a strong base for the removal of sex biased discrimination in society."

Female first marriage in East and Southeast Asia: a Kiefer-Neumann model

Many studies have shown that schooling levels of husband and wife are important determinants of household behavior in developing countries. This article asks how the schooling levels of husband and wife come to be associated with each other through the marriage market. The Kiefer-Neumann model of labor market search is adapted to marital search, the aim being to explain both the positive sorting on educational levels for spouses, and the positive relationship between female schooling and age at 1st marriage. World Fertility Survey data for Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia are employed in the analyses.

Determinants of cumulative fertility in Kenya

This paper analyses the effects of age at first marriage, level of education, place of residence, marriage disruption, religion, contraceptive use, and work status on cumulative fertility in Kenya, using data from the 1977-78 Kenya Fertility Survey. Age at first marriage is the main determinant of cumulative fertility, but there are significant effects of level of education and marriage disruption. Place of residence is only significant for the Coast province. The implication of the findings is that to promote any real decline in fertility, emphasis should be placed on providing higher education and work opportunities for young women as an alternative to early marriage.

Polygamy and fertility in Somalia

The 1983 Somali Family Health Survey showed that polygamy and monogamy selected women with different social characteristics. Wives in polygamous unions were prone to be younger at first martial cohabitation and to have previous marital disruptions. Since a young age at first cohabitation and number of previous marriages have opposite effects on the cumulative fertility rate of women, the difference in this rate between wives in polygamous and monogamous unions vanished when both factors were controlled in a multivariate analysis.

The cross-cultural study of fertility among Hispanic adolescents in the Americas

This paper examines various definitions of marriage in order to compare the nonmarital fertility of Hispanic adolescents in the Americas. The data include distributions of legal marriages and consensual unions among adolescents in Latin America, proportions of Latin American adolescents who have borne a child by categories of marriage and consensual unions, marital distributions among Hispanic adolescents in the United States, and fertility by marital status for young US Hispanics. The vast majority of young women in Latin America report never having been married or in union, although more reported living in consensual union than in legal marriages. Rates of childbearing are low among women who report never having been consensually or legally married. Foreign-born Hispanic women are considerably more likely to be married than their US-born compatriots. Foreign-born women from countries with high rates of consensual unions are more likely than young US-born women to have had a premarital birth; in contrast, foreign-born women from countries with low rates of consensual unions are less likely to have borne a child.

Antecedents and consequences of remarriage in later life

Using the Retirement History Study (RHS), respondents were identified who entered the study widowed or divorced, and then remarried. Respondents were also identified who entered the study as married, became widowed or divorced, and then remarried. In the latter case, because of limitations of the RHS, only males were observed. With some matching relevant to the types of analyses carried out, comparison groups were selected, providing an opportunity to examine both antecedents and consequences of remarriage.

Age at first marriage and age at first birth

This paper presents findings on patterns of age of 1st marriage and age of 1st birth for 41 countries participating in the World Fertility Survey program. The age distribution of 1st marriage and 1st birth is summarized with 3 statistics: the mean, the standard deviation, and the proportion ever experiencing the event. The particular method of estimation is based on a model that ensures that estimates for all cohorts are comparable, even though some women have completed their reproductive experience while others have not. The analysis provides insights into sources of error in the reporting of age at 1st birth. In addition, trends and cross-country patterns are documented and conclusions are drawn about the adequacy of these statistics for the description of patterns of age at 1st birth and age at 1st marriage.

Nuptiality and fertility in the Dominican Republic

Women in marital unions had more live births than those in consensual unions. The relationship between cumulative fertility and the number of fertile sexual unions is positive for the early childbearing years and negative for the later ones. There is no consistent pattern of relationship between fertility and the sociocultural independent variables for different subgroups according to nuptiality pattern. The relationship between fertility and nuptiality in the Dominican Republic is consistent with that for the Caribbean region.

Issues in smoothing empirical hazard rates

"This chapter presents a smooth estimator of the hazard rate using a variable-span running loglinear specification that allows investigators to maintain only mild assumptions about the functional forms of population heterogeneity and time inhomogeneity in the rate. This estimator is useful both in exploratory data analyses (EDA) and in checking parametric assumptions. Examples drawn from data on the transition to first marriage for women in the U.S. show that several common parametric assumptions are violated in these data and illustrate that the smoothed hazard estimator can yield important insights not easily obtained from more conventional methods."

Female employment and fertility: further investigation of an ambivalent association

"This study of the relationship between female employment and fertility is based on a survey of 1,000 ever-married women in Karachi, [Pakistan]. A distinct pattern of differentials in actual performance and in desired fertility is observed across working and non-working women.... Women in higher status occupations marry much later than and have half the completed family size of those women working in lower status occupations. The fertility of non-working women lies somewhere in between these two groups. Some reasons for the fertility differentials found are identified in variations in point of entry into the labour force relative to the stage in child-bearing, in expectations from sons in old age support, and in relative facility in seeking means of fertility control. Working women in higher status occupations also have better chances of their children surviving, whereas women in lower status occupations suffer a greater toll of child deaths."

American children in multiracial households

This study provides a demographic portrait of multiracial households, using children as the units of analysis. The authors conceptualize 3 dimensions for understanding multiracial qualities: 1) the racial composition of a household overall, 2) where in the household a racial difference exists relative to the household head, and 3) where in the household a racial difference exists relative to each child. Using microdata from the 1980 US census, the authors explore the 1st 2 of these dimensions and test 2 propositions about the links between racial diversity and other nonracial attributes of children's household environments. The finding is made, among other things, that the largest proportion of children live in Asian-white households, and that about 60% live in households headed by mixed-race couples. Support for the notion that attributes of multiracial households fall between those of their same-race counterparts was mixed. Nonetheless, there appears to be a link between location of diversity and some nonracial characteristics of household.