Demographic Research

PIP This paper presents the completed series of life tables from 1751 to 1995 that was used in identifying the four stages of mortality transition in Finland, separated by the years 1880, 1945, and 1970. The series documents all the different stages of mortality transition from high to low levels in an originally agricultural country experiencing many wars, famines, and other crises, as well as major political change. The cyclical fluctuation of the death rate in the 18th and 19th centuries is measured and examined in relation to epidemics, famines, and wars. Important permanent changes in mortality also took place in this period. Each of the successive stages of transition produced its own characteristic pattern of mortality change, which contrasted with those of the other stages. Finally, the age profile of the years added to life is drawn to illustrate the end result of each stage of mortality transition.

Same-sex couples are less likely to be homogamous than different-sex couples on a variety of characteristics including race/ethnicity, age, and education. This study confirms results from previous studies which used 1990 U.S. census data and extends previous analyses to examine changes from 1990 to 2000. We find that same-sex male cohabitors are generally the least likely to resemble one another, followed by same-sex female cohabitors, different-sex cohabitors, and different-sex married couples. Despite estimated growth in the numbers of same-sex couples in the population and the increasing acceptance of same-sex unions, we find little evidence of diminishing differences in the resemblance of same- and different-sex couples between 1990 and 2000, with the possible exception of educational homogamy.

In the absence of HIV testing, how do rural Malawians assess their HIV status? In this paper, we use a unique dataset that includes respondents' HIV status as well as their subjective likelihood of HIV infection. These data show that many rural Malawians overestimate their likelihood of current HIV infection. The discrepancy between actual and perceived status raises an important question: Why are so many wrong? We begin by identifying determinants of self-assessed HIV status, and then compare these assessments with HIV biomarker results. Finally, we ask what characteristics of individuals are associated with errors in self-assessments.

Unobserved differences in individual's susceptibility to death are an important aspect in the analysis of contemporary mortality patterns. However, observed mortality rates at adult ages, which are usually well described by a Gompertz curve, are often perceived inconsistent with frailty models of mortality. The authors therefore propose a modified DeMoivre hazard function that is suitable for the application of frailty models to adult and old ages. The proposed hazard increases faster than exponential, and when combined with unobserved frailty it can capture a broad range of patterns encountered in the analysis of adult mortality. The authors' application to Bulgaria during 1992-93 suggests that the stronger selection process in the male population, caused by an overall higher level of mortality, may constitute a primary mechanism leading to the convergence of male and female mortality at higher ages. Hence, the convergence between male and female mortality is not necessarily caused by differential process of aging across sexes, but is merely a consequence of the different levels of mortality at adult ages.

Despite considerable concern regarding the social consequences of sub-Saharan Africa's high orphan prevalence, no research investigates how living in a community densely populated with orphans is more broadly associated with children's-including nonorphans'-acquisition of human capital. We provide a new look at the implications of widespread orphanhood in sub-Saharan Africa by examining whether living in an area with a high concentration of orphans is associated with children's likelihood of school enrollment. We use data from the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) to estimate multilevel logistic regression models to assess whether living in a setting with a higher concentration of orphans is associated with school enrollment among 383,010 children in 336 provinces in 34 sub-Saharan African countries. Orphan concentration has a curvilinear association with children's school enrollment in western and eastern Africa: the initially positive association becomes negative at higher levels. In central and southern Africa, orphan concentration has a positive linear association with children's school enrollment. In western and eastern Africa, the negative association between living in a setting more densely populated with orphans and children's school enrollment provides suggestive evidence that the orphan disadvantage "spills over" in the communities most heavily affected. Conversely, in central and southern Africa, the positive association between living in a setting more densely populated with orphans and children's school enrollment highlights the resiliency of these relatively wealthier communities with high levels of orphans. Although longitudinal research is needed to confirm these findings and clarify the underlying mechanisms, this study lays the groundwork for a new body of research aimed at understanding the broader social implications of widespread orphanhood in sub-Saharan Africa.

BACKGROUND HIV is spread through structured sexual networks, which are influenced by migration patterns, but network-oriented studies of mobility and HIV risk behavior have been limited. OBJECTIVE We present a comprehensive description and initial results from our Migration & HIV in Ghana (MHG) study in Agbogbloshie, an urban slum area within Accra, Ghana. METHODS The MHG study was a population-based cross-sectional study of adults aged 18–49 in Agbogbloshie in 2012. We used a one-year retrospective relationship history calendar to collect egocentric network data on sexual partners as well as migration and short-term mobility, and tested for prevalent HIV-1/2 infection. RESULTS HIV prevalence was 5.5%, with prevalence among women (7.2%) over twice that of men (2.8%). Three-quarters of residents were born outside the Greater Accra region, but had lived in Agbogbloshie an average of 10.7 years. Only 7% had moved housing structures within the past year. However, short-term mobility was common. Residents had an average of 7.3 overnight trips in the last year, with women reporting more travel than men. Thirty-seven percent of men and 9% of women reported more than one sexual partner in the last year. CONCLUSIONS Population-based surveys of migration and sexual risk behavior using relationship history calendars in low-resource settings can produce high quality data. Residents in Agbogbloshie are disproportionately affected by HIV, and have high levels of short-term mobility. HIV prevention interventions targeted to highly mobile populations in high prevalence settings may have far-reaching and long-term implications.

Intergenerational transfer patterns in sub-Saharan Africa are poorly understood, despite the alleged importance of support networks to ameliorate the complex implications of the HIV/AIDS epidemic for families. There is a considerable need for research on intergenerational support networks and transfers to better understand the mechanisms through which extended families cope with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and potentially alleviate some of its consequences in sub-Saharan Africa, and to comprehend how transfers respond-or not-to perceptions about own and other family members' health. Using the 2008 round of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH), we estimate the age patterns and the multiple directions of financial and non-financial transfer flows in rural Malawi-from prime-aged respondents to their elderly parents and adult children age 15 and up. We also estimate the social, demographic and economic correlates of financial and non-financial transfers of financial intergenerational transfers in this context. Our findings are that: (1) intergenerational financial and non-financial transfers are widespread and a key characteristic of family relationships in rural Malawi; (2) downward and upward transfers are importantly constrained and determined by the availability of transfer partners (parents or adult children); (3) financial net transfers are strongly age-patterned and the middle generations are net-providers of transfers; (4) non-financial transfers are based on mutual assistance rather than reallocation of resources; and (5) intergenerational transfers are generally not related to health status, including HIV positive status.

Women, who generally do more unpaid and less paid work than men, have greater incentives to stay in marriages than cohabiting unions, which generally carry fewer legal protections for individuals that wish to dissolve their relationship. The extent to which cohabitation is institutionalized, however, is a matter of policy and varies substantially by country. The gender gap in paid and unpaid work between married and cohabiting individuals should be larger in countries where cohabitation is less institutionalized and where those in cohabiting relationships have relatively fewer legal protections should the relationship dissolve, yet few studies have explored this variation. Using time diary data from France, Italy, and the United States, we assess the time men and women devote to paid and unpaid work in cohabiting and married couples. These three countries provide a useful diversity in marital regimes for examining these expectations: France, where cohabitation is most "marriage like" and where partnerships can be registered and carry legal rights; the United States, where cohabitation is common but is short-lived and unstable and where legal protections vary across states; and Italy, where cohabitation is not common and where such unions are not legally acknowledged and less socially approved than in either France or the United States. Cohabitating men's and women's time allocated to market and nonmarket work is generally more similar than married men and women. Our expectations about country differences are only partially borne out by the findings. Greater gender differences in the time allocated to market and nonmarket work are found in Italy relative to either France or the U.S.

Citizenship status among the foreign born is a crucial indicator of social and political incorporation, yet there are good reasons to suspect that citizenship status is inaccurately reported on U.S. surveys. This paper updates research carried out in the mid-1990s by Passel and Clark (1997) on the extent to which foreign-born non-citizen respondents in U.S. government-sponsored surveys misreport as naturalized citizens. We compare demographic estimates of the resident naturalized foreign-born population in 2010, based on administrative data, to estimates from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS). Similar to previous research, we find that misreporting in the ACS is especially high among immigrants from all countries/regions who report fewer than five years in the U.S. We also find that among longer-term foreign-born residents, misreporting is concentrated only among those originating in Mexico, especially men, a finding that diverges from Passel and Clark in that we find no evidence of over-reporting among immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean. Finally, the estimated magnitude of misreporting, especially among longer-term Mexican-born men, is sensitive to assumptions about the rate of emigration in our administrative-based demographic estimates, and assumptions about coverage error in the ACS, though altering these assumptions does not change the conclusions drawn from the general patterns of the results. For applications that use citizenship as an indicator of legal status, we recommend that self-reported data on citizenship be accepted at face value for all groups except those with less than five years of U.S. residence and Mexican men.

Against a backdrop of two new developments in the fertility behavior of the Mexican-Origin population in the U.S., the present discussion will update contemporary Mexican-Origin fertility patterns and address several theoretical weaknesses in the current approach to immigrant group fertility. Data come from six national surveys (three from Mexico and three from the U.S.) that cover a twenty-five year period (1975- 2000). The findings demonstrate dramatic decreases in the fertility rates in Mexico at the same time that continuous increases have been documented in the fertility rates of native-born Mexican-Americans in the U.S. at younger ages. These changes necessitate a reexamination of the idea that Mexican pronatalist values are responsible for the high fertility rates found within the Mexican-Origin population in the U.S. Instead, they point to the increasing relevance of framing the fertility behavior of the Mexican-Origin population within a racial stratification perspective that stresses the influence of U.S. social context on fertility behavior. As a step in this direction, the analysis examines fertility patterns within the Mexican-Origin population in the U.S., giving special attention to the role of nativity/generational status in contributing to within group differences.

While there is a rich literature on the practice of child fostering in sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about how fostering impacts receiving households, as few studies consider household conditions both before and after fostering. Despite the fact that circumstances surrounding fostering vary, the literature's key distinction of fostering is often drawn along the simple line of whether or not a household is fostering a child. This paper argues that anticipation of fostering responsibilities, in particular, is a useful dimension to distinguish fostering experiences for receiving households. This paper examines the relationship between receiving a foster child and subsequent changes in household wealth. Particular emphasis is placed on how these changes are conditioned by differing levels of anticipation of the fostering event. This study uses data from Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT), a longitudinal survey in Balaka, Malawi. Using data from 1754 TLT respondents, fixed effects pooled time-series models are estimated to assess whether and how receiving a foster child changes household wealth. This paper demonstrates the heterogeneity of fostering experiences for receiving households. The results show that households that anticipate fostering responsibilities experience a greater increase in household wealth than both households that do not foster and those that are surprised by fostering. Households that anticipate fostering responsibilities exhibit the greatest increase in household wealth. While fostering households that do not anticipate fostering responsibilities may not experience these gains, there is no evidence to indicate that such households are negatively impacted relative to households that do not foster. This finding suggests that additional childcare responsibilities may not be as detrimental to African households as some researchers have feared.

We use two surveys to describe the demographic and attitudinal correlates of being in "Living Apart Together" (LAT), cohabiting, and marital relationships for heterosexuals, lesbians, and gay men. About one third of U.S. adults not married or cohabiting are in LAT relationships - these individuals would be classified as "single" in conventional studies that focus on co-residential unions. Gay men are somewhat more likely than heterosexual men to be in LAT relationships. For heterosexuals and lesbians, LAT relationships are more common among younger people. Heterosexuals in LAT unions are less likely to expect to marry their partners, but more likely to say that couples should be emotionally dependent than are cohabiters. Regardless of sexual orientation, people in LAT relationships perceive similar amounts of emotional support from partners, but less instrumental support than cohabiters perceive.

We evaluated the psychometric properties of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy among Indian women using classical methods and Item Response Modeling. The scale exhibited good internal consistency and internal structure, with overall scores correlating well with each item's response categories. Items performed similarly for pregnant and non-pregnant women, and scores decreased with increasing parity, providing evidence for validity. Analyses also detected limitations, including infrequent selection of middle response categories and some evidence of differential item functioning by parity. We conclude that the LMUP represents an improvement over existing measures but recommend steps for enhancing scale performance for this cultural context.

An analysis published in a recent edition of this journal (Puur, Olah, Tazi-Preve, and Dorbritz 2008) reported that, in eight European countries, men with egalitarian gender attitudes both desired and had more children than men with more traditional gender attitudes. These unexpected findings led us to explore a similar research question with an alternate dataset--the European/World Value Surveys. But we found--without exception--a negative association between men's egalitarian attitudes and fertility, not only in the selected eight European countries but also in a considerable number of other developed countries. We explore possible reasons for and implications of these divergent findings.

PIP This study investigates the relationship between month of birth and life span. It uses 2 different data for total populations in Austria and Denmark. The Austrian data are based on vital statistics of the exact data of birth and the exact date of death for each person dying after age 50 between 1988 and 1996. The Danish data consist of the total population aged 50+ on April 1, 1968. These people were then followed until their death or until August 1998. Results suggest that life span and month of birth were in fact related. Evidences were presented to support or argue the three hypotheses being tested that explain the relationship between month of birth and longevity. Overall, many studies support that this pattern was not the result of the seasonal distribution of death. And the longevity cannot be explained by the so-called ¿birthday-effect¿--the alleged tendency of people to die shortly after their birthday. Instead, the study concluded by discussing the possible social and biological mechanisms related to a person's season of birth that might influence life expectancy.

This multicenter study has produced a database of 7017 menstrual cycles contributed by 881 women. It provides improved knowledge on length and location of the "fertile window" (identified as of up to 12 days duration) and the patterns and level of daily conception probability. The day of ovulation was identified in each cycle from records of basal body temperature and mucus symptoms. By referencing days of intercourse to the surrogate ovulation markers, estimates of daily fecundability were computed either directly or by the Scwartz model, both for single and multiple acts of intercourse in the fertile window. The relationship between coital pattern and fecundability has been explored. Univariate analysis underlines the significant link with fecundability only of the woman's reproductive history.

Although previous studies have indicated that performance assessments strongly predict future survival, few have evaluated the incremental value in the presence of controls for self-reported activity and mobility limitations. We assess and compare the added value of four tests - walking speed, chair stands, grip strength, and peak expiratory flow (PEF) - for predicting all-cause mortality. Using population-based samples of older adults in Costa Rica (n = 2290, aged 60+) and Taiwan (n = 1219, aged 53+), we estimate proportional hazards models of mortality for an approximate five-year period. Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves are used to assess the prognostic value of each performance assessment. Self-reported measures of physical limitations contribute substantial gains in mortality prediction, whereas performance-based assessments yield modest incremental gains. PEF provides the greatest added value, followed by grip strength. Our results suggest that including more than two performance assessments may provide little improvement in mortality prediction. PEF and grip strength are often simpler to administer in home interview settings, impose less of a burden on some respondents, and, in the presence of self-reported limitations, appear to be better predictors of mortality than do walking speed or chair stands. Being unable to perform the test is often a strong predictor of mortality, but these indicators are not well-defined. Exclusion rates vary by the specific task and are likely to depend on the underlying demographic, health, social and cultural characteristics of the sample.

Biodemography has emerged and grown over the last fifteen years, with loyal and farsighted support from its patrons. As it enters what might be called its adolescence as a field, it faces challenges along with abounding opportunities. One challenge is to continue to generate knowledge that contributes to human health and well-being. A second is to insist on high standards of quality control within its crossdisciplinary environment. Opportunities appear in a variety of directions, including mathematical modeling, genomic analyses, and field studies of aging in the wild.

BACKGROUND: Limited information is available about teenage pregnancy and childbearing in rural areas, even though approximately 20 percent of the nation's youth live in rural areas. Identifying whether there are differences in the teenage birth rate (TBR) across metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas is important, because these differences may reflect modifiable ecological-level influences such as education, employment, laws, healthcare infrastructure, and policies that could potentially reduce the TBR. OBJECTIVES: The goals of this study are to investigate whether there are spatially varying relationships between the TBR and the independent variables, and if so, whether these associations differ between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties. METHODS: We explore the heterogeneity within metropolitan/nonmetropolitan county groups separately using geographically weighted regression (GWR), and investigate the difference between metropolitan/nonmetropolitan counties using spatial regime models with spatial errors. These analyses were applied to county-level data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Census Bureau. RESULTS: GWR results suggested that non-stationarity exists in the associations between TBR and determinants within metropolitan/nonmetropolitan groups. The spatial regime analysis indicated that the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage on TBR significantly varied by the metropolitan status of counties. CONCLUSIONS: While the spatially varying relationships between the TBR and independent variables were found within each metropolitan status of counties, only the magnitude of the impact of the socioeconomic disadvantage index is significantly stronger among metropolitan counties than nonmetropolitan counties. Our findings suggested that place-specific policies for the disadvantaged groups in a county could be implemented to reduce TBR in the US.

This paper analyzes how labor market instability since the late 1980s in Europe mediated decisions to second births. In particular, it examines which are the dimensions of economic uncertainty that affect women with different educational backgrounds. First, employing time varying measures of aggregate market conditions for women in twelve European countries as well as micro-measures of each woman's labor market history, it shows that delays in second births are significant in countries with high unemployment, among women who are unemployed, particularly the least educated, and who have temporary jobs. Holding a very short contract is more critical than unemployment for college graduates. Second, using the 2006 Spanish Fertility Survey, it presents remarkably similar findings for Spain, the country with the most dramatic changes in both fertility and unemployment in the last decades: a high jobless rate and the widespread use of limited-duration contracts were correlated with a substantial postponement of second births.

The rate of mortality increase with age among adults is typically used as a measure of the rate of functional decline associated with aging or senescence. While black and white populations differ in the level of mortality, mortality also rises less rapidly with age for blacks than for whites, leading to the well-known black/white mortality "crossover". This paper investigates black/white differences in the rate of mortality increase with age for major causes of death in order to examine the factors responsible for the black/white crossover. The analysis considers two explanations for the crossover: selective survival and age misreporting. Mortality is modeled using a Gompertz model for 11 causes of death from ages 50-84 among blacks and whites by sex. Mortality increases more rapidly with age for whites than for blacks for nearly all causes of death considered. The all-cause mortality rate of mortality increase is nearly two percentage points higher for whites. The analysis finds evidence for both selective survival and age misreporting, although age misreporting is a more prominent explanation among women. The black/white mortality crossover reflects large differences in the rate of age-related mortality increase. Instead of reflecting the impact of specific causes of death, this pattern exists across many disparate disease conditions, indicating the need for a broad explanation.

This paper examines the living arrangements of Swedish children from 1970 through 1999 using the Level of Living Survey. Sweden, with low levels of economic inequality and a generous welfare state, provides an important context for studying socioeconomic differentials in family structure. We find that, although differences by parent education in non-marital childbearing are substantial and persistent, cohabiting childbearing is common even among highly educated Swedish parents. Educational differences in family instability were small during the 1970s, but increased over time as a result of rising union disruption among less-educated parents (secondary graduates or less). Children in more advantaged families experienced substantially less change in family structure and instability over the study period. Although cohabiting parents were more likely to separate than parents married at the child's birth, differences were greater for the less-educated. Data limitations precluded investigating these differences across time. We conclude that educational differences in children's living arrangements in Sweden have grown, but remain small in international comparisons.

This article uses life history calendar (LHC) data from coastal Ghana and event history statistical methods to examine inter-regional migration for men and women, focusing on four specific migration types: rural-urban, rural-rural, urban-urban, and urban-rural. Our analysis is unique because it examines how key determinants of migration- including education, employment, marital status, and childbearing-differ by sex for these four types of migration. We find that women are significantly less mobile than men overall, but that more educated women are more likely to move (particularly to urban areas) than their male counterparts. Moreover, employment in the prior year is less of a deterrent to migration among women. While childbearing has a negative effect on migration, this impact is surprisingly stronger for men than for women, perhaps because women's search for assistance in childcare promotes migration. Meanwhile, being married or in union appears to have little effect on migration probabilities for either men or women. These results demonstrate the benefits of a LHC approach and suggest that migration research should further examine men's and women's mobility as it relates to both human capital and household and family dynamics, particularly in developing settings.

Although longitudinal experimental community health research is crucial to testing hypotheses about the demographic impact of health technologies, longitudinal demographic research field stations are rare, owing to the complexity and high cost of developing requisite computer software systems. This paper describes the Household Registration System (HRS), a software package that has been used for the rapid development of eleven surveillance systems in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Features of the HRS automate software generation for a family surveillance applications, obviating the need for new and complex computer software systems for each new longitudinal demographic study.

To address the question of whether sex differences in mortality will in the future rise, fall, or stay the same, this study uses relative smoking prevalence among males and females to forecast future changes in relative smoking-attributed mortality. Data on 21 high income nations from 1975 to 2000 and a lag between smoking prevalence and mortality allow forecasts up to 2020. Averaged across nations, the results for logged male/female ratios in smoking mortality reveal equalization of the sex differential. However, continued divergence in non-smoking mortality rates would counter convergence in smoking mortality rates and lead to future increases in the female advantage overall, particularly in nations at late stages of the cigarette epidemic (such as the United States and the United Kingdom).

The multistate life table (MSLT) model is an important demographic method to document life cycle processes. In this paper, we present the SPACE (Stochastic Population Analysis for Complex Events) program to estimate MSLT functions and their sampling variability. It has several advantages over other programs, including the use of micro-simulation and the bootstrap method to estimate the variance of MSLT functions. Simulation enables researchers to analyze a broader array of statistics than the deterministic approach, and may be especially advantageous in investigating distributions of MSLT functions. The bootstrap method takes sample design into account to correct the potential bias in variance estimates.

Despite extensive research, doubts remain regarding the degree of correspondence between prior stated fertility preferences and subsequent fertility behavior. Preference instability is a factor that potentially undermines predictiveness. Furthermore, if other predictors of fertility substantially explain fertility, then knowledge of preferences may contribute little to explaining or predicting individual fertility behavior. In this study, we examined these aspects of the study of individual fertility preference-behavior consistency. Using a prospective multi-wave panel dataset, we modeled the monthly likelihood of conception, taking into account the dynamic nature of preferences, and controlling for changing reproductive life cycle factors and stable socioeconomic background predictors of fertility. We demonstrate from a sample of fecund married Ghanaian women that fertility preferences retain independent predictive power in the model predicting the likelihood of conception.

In this paper we explore patterns of economic transfers between adults within household and family networks in a village in Malawi's Rumphi district, using data from the 2006 round of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health. We fit Exponential-family Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to assess individual, relational, and higher-order network effects. The network effects of cyclic giving, reciprocity, and in-degree and out-degree distribution suggest a network with a tendency away from the formation of hierarchies or "hubs." Effects of age, sex, working status, education, health status, and kinship relation are also considered.

Demographic and health surveillance (DS) systems monitor and document individual and group-level processes in well-defined populations over long periods of time. The resulting data are complex and inherently temporal. Established methods of storing and manipulating temporal data are unable to adequately address the challenges posed by these data. Building on existing standards, a temporal framework and notation are presented that are able to faithfully record all of the time-related information (or partial lack thereof) produced by surveillance systems. The Unified Timestamp isolates all of the inherent complexity of temporal data into a single data type and provides the foundation on which a Unified Timestamp class can be built. The Unified Timestamp accommodates both point- and interval-based time measures with arbitrary precision, including temporal sets. Arbitrary granularities and calendars are supported, and the Unified Timestamp is hierarchically organized, allowing it to represent an unlimited array of temporal entities.

BACKGROUND Hispanics in the U.S. have higher fertility than non-Hispanic Whites but it is not clear why this difference exists nor whether fertility levels reflect the preferences of individuals in these groups. Understanding racial-ethnic differences in fertility is important for understanding American fertility more broadly since the majority of births in the U.S. are to non-White women. OBJECTIVE This paper examines the correspondence between fertility intentions and outcomes for Hispanic and White women and men in the U.S. METHODS Panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to describe intended family size (recorded at age 22), completed family size (recorded at age 42 and above), and the likelihood that these numbers match, for Hispanic and White women and men. Regression analyses are used to understand why the correspondence between intentions and outcomes varies across groups. RESULTS Although Hispanics come closer to achieving parity intentions in the aggregate (Hispanic women fall short by a quarter of a birth, compared to more than two-fifths for Whites), at the individual level they are not more likely to meet their intentions (33% of Hispanic women achieve their desired parity, compared with 38% of Whites). Hispanics have higher fertility than Whites both because they intend more children at the start of their reproductive lives and because they are more likely to exceed these intentions. CONCLUSIONS Higher fertility among Hispanics compared with Whites in the U.S. is due to a combination of wanted and unwanted fertility. In addition, despite relatively high completed fertility, a large proportion of Hispanic women and men fall short of early life intentions.

Factors including smoking, drinking, substance abuse, obesity, and health care have all been shown to affect health and longevity. The relative importance of each of these factors is disputed in the literature, and has been assessed through a number of methods. This paper uses a novel approach to identify factors responsible for interstate mortality variation. It identifies factors through their imprint on mortality patterns and can therefore identify factors that are difficult or impossible to measure directly, such as sensitive health behaviors. The analysis calculates age-standardized death rates by cause of death from 2000-2009 for white men and women separately. Only premature deaths between ages 20-64 are included. Latent variables responsible for mortality variation are then identified through a factor analysis conducted on a death-rate-by-state matrix. These unobserved latent variables are inferred from observed mortality data and interpreted based on their correlations with individual causes of death. Smoking and obesity, substance abuse, and rural/urban residence are the three factors that make the largest contributions to state-level mortality variation among males. The same factors are at work for women but are less vividly revealed. The identification of factors is supported by a review of epidemiologic studies and strengthened by correlations with observable behavioral variables. Results are not sensitive to the choice of factor-analytic method used. The majority of interstate variation in mortality among white working-age adults in the United States is associated with a combination of smoking and obesity, substance abuse and rural/urban residence.

A substantial number of young women experience pregnancy scares - thinking they might be pregnant, and later discovering that they are not. Although pregnancy scares are distressing events, little is known about who experiences them and whether they are important to our understanding of unintended pregnancy. We describe the young women who experience pregnancy scares, and examine the link between pregnancy scares and subsequent unintended pregnancy. We used data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Study. T-tests and regression analyses were conducted using baseline and weekly data to estimate relationships between respondent characteristics and subsequent pregnancy scares. Event history methods were used to assess pregnancy scares as a predictor of unintended pregnancy. Nine percent of the young women experienced a pregnancy scare during the study. African-American race, lack of two-parent family structure, lower GPA, cohabitation, and sex without birth control prior to the study are associated with experiencing a pregnancy scare and with experiencing a greater number of pregnancy scares. Further, experiencing a pregnancy scare is strongly associated with subsequent unintended pregnancy, independent of background factors. Forty percent of the women who experienced a pregnancy scare subsequently had an unintended pregnancy during the study period, relative to only 11% of those who did not experience a pregnancy scare. Young women from less advantaged backgrounds are more likely to experience a pregnancy scare, and pregnancy scares are often followed by an unintended pregnancy.

Using demographic multi-state, cohort-component methods, we produce projections for 120 countries (covering 93% of the world population in 2005) by five-year age groups, sex, and four levels of educational attainment for the years 2005-2050. Taking into account differentials in fertility and mortality by education level, we present the first systematic global educational attainment projections according to four widely differing education scenarios. The results show the possible range of future educational attainment trends around the world, thereby contributing to long-term economic and social planning at the national and international levels, and to the assessment of the feasibility of international education goals.

Even in present-day high-income countries, there is a lot of evidence of a high degree of vulnerability of the population to both high and low outdoor temperatures. The magnitude of temperature-related mortality is strongly related to a wide variety of social, economic, and behavioural factors. To gain insight into the changing impact of cold and heat on mortality, we analyze Dutch individual death records in relation to daily temperature for the period 1855-2006 for one of the 11 Dutch provinces. Making use of negative binomial regression analysis, we study whether the effect of temperature varied by age, sex, and social class, and analyze the changes in the vulnerability to temperature fluctuations.

In this paper, we present a number of descriptive measures on children’s experience of family disruption and family formation. We use data from the Fertility and Family Surveys of 15 European countries and corresponding data from the USA in order to find out what kind of family circumstances children are born into and what experience they subsequently have of various family-transformation events of their mothers. Our presentation reveals some similarities but also striking differences in the family-demographic experience of children in different countries. The USA stands out as one extreme case with its very high proportion of children born to a lone mother, with a higher probability of children who experience a union disruption of their parents than anywhere else, and with many children having the experience of living in a stepfamily. Italy stands out at the other end of the scale. Practically all children here are born to a married mother and very few of them experience the dissolution of their parents’ union before they turn 15.

Based on an analysis of the Spanish census and the January 1, 2005 municipal register and on exploratory fieldwork in Catalonia, this paper combines ethnography and demography, in conjunction with current Spanish reunification law, to examine the dynamics of what appears to be high fertility among Gambian immigrants living in Spain. We suggest that this high fertility rate reflects several things. One is the high costs of living in Spain for an unskilled, often-undocumented, but also relatively-longstanding SubSaharan group from a homeland with high rates of fertility: a homeland with which close ties remain vital for migrants in highly marginal conditions. Another is the replacement, in some cases, of older wives by younger ones from Africa, resulting in high rates of reproduction for short slices of time by a circulating pool of young women. We focus, however, on the role of Spanish and European policies themselves in shaping these numbers, particularly those policies that place restrictions on the free movement of people. We conclude that the most interesting demographic facet of this population may not be high fertility but rather the paradoxical dynamics of child accumulation in particular geographic regions as an artifact of Spanish law itself.

We analyzed data from the historic population of the Krummhörn (Ostfriesland, Germany, 1720-1874) to determine the effects of grandparents in general and grandmothers in particular on child mortality. Multilevel event-history models were used to test how the survival of grandparents in general influenced the survival of the children. Random effects were included in some models in order to take the potentially influential effect of unobserved heterogeneity into account. It could be shown that while maternal grandmothers indeed improved the child’s survival, paternal grandmothers worsened it. Both grandfathers had no effect. These findings are not only in accordance with the assumptions of the "grandmother hypothesis" but also may be interpreted as hints for differential grandparental investment strategies.

This paper investigates the effects of sibship size on status attainment across different contexts and subgroups. Resource dilution theory predicts that with larger sibship size, children’s status outcomes fall. However, the empirical record has shown that this is not always the case. In this paper we have tested three alternative hypotheses for neutral or even positive effects of sibship size on status attainment on the basis of a large-scale registry database covering the period of industrialization and fertility decline in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century. Our findings offer support for the family developmental cycle, buffering by kin groups, and socio-economic development as alternative explanations to the resource dilution hypothesis.

In this paper we measure differences in infant mortality among the central European populations of the Austrian Empire during the mid-19th century using data published in the Tafeln zur Statistik der Österreichischen Monarchie (Statistical Tables of the Austrian Monarchy). Our aim is mainly methodological, i.e., to illustrate the extraordinary richness of this data, and to discuss whether the quality of the material on infant mortality published around 1850 in the Tafeln guarantees comparability between regions. This article demonstrates that – with several exceptions – the quality of the material on infant mortality published in the Tafeln around 1850 guarantees reliable comparability between the Empire’s Länder. Data on sex, age at death, and legitimacy were all recorded with great accuracy. This article – of a methodological nature – provides only a few examples of potential analyses which might be carried out using such rich and detailed territorial data. The geography of mortality in the first three years of life varied by age, but according to intervals different than those usually employed when studying early mortality. Four ages can be identified (first month, months 1-5, months 6-17, and months 18-35) with a geography of differing mortality. In all likelihood, in these four age groups, mortality differences between Länder were motivated by diverse reasons.

Divorce rate is a poor indicator of marital instability because many marital disruptions never become divorces. This paper provides the first estimate of the rate of marital disruption in the U.S. in 1860 - 1948. Marital disruption rate was similar to divorce rate after the Civil War but the two rates wildly diverged in the early 20th century. In 1900 - 1930, the disruption rate was as much as double the divorce rate, implying that perhaps half of all disruptions never reached the court. In the long run, the cohort rate of marital disruption increased from about 10% in the mid-1860s to about 30% in the 1940s.

This paper aims to examine changes in common longevity and variability of the adult life span, and attempts to answer whether or not the compression of mortality continues in Switzerland in the years 1876-2005. The results show that the negative relationships between the large increase in the adult modal age at death, observed at least from the 1920s, and the decrease in the standard deviation of the ages at deaths occurring above it, illustrate a significant compression of adult mortality. Typical adult longevity increased by about 10% during the last fifty years in Switzerland, and adult heterogeneity in the age at death decreased in the same proportion. This analysis has not found any evidence suggesting that we are approaching longevity limits in term of modal or even maximum life spans. It ascertains a slowdown in the reduction of adult heterogeneity in longevity, already observed in Japan and other low mortality countries.

The study investigates how Hungarian demographic development from the end of World War I to 1990 related to the changes that took place in Western Europe, and in which areas and in what periods can divergence or convergence be observed. The issues examined included fertility, mortality and nuptiality movements. Based on the analyses three main periods in 20th century Hungarian demographic development can be distinguished: from the beginning to the middle of the century, Hungary converged to the societies of Western Europe; approximately from the middle of the century to the mid-60s, the diminution of differences between Hungary and Western Europe halted on the whole, but the gap still did not begin to widen; in the third period, which lasted from the mid-60s to 1990, Hungary took a course diverging from Western Europe.

This paper demonstrates how intensity regression and methods for visualizing demographic data can be applied to the study of sex differentials in survival in the Canadian population over the period 1921-1997. In general the results indicate that death rates declined differently for males and females and that the rate of mortality decline was not constant over age or over time. The global pattern of the Canadian sex differentials has a very distinct form and is consistent with findings for other countries.

In this paper we present a detailed demographic analysis of the change of period fertility that occurred since 1930, based on individual retrospective data, collected in the most recent (five percent) microcensus of the Russian Federation from 1994. We assess the influence of external events on the level and distribution of (period) fertility. For the years prior to 1950 our information on age specific fertility is not complete, but using fertility models acceptable estimates can be constructed. The Coale-Trussell model is particularly suited for producing detailed and robust estimates of interpretable parameters of the fertility distribution. Although none of the observed crises in Russia succeeded in exerting a decisive influence on the course of the fertility transition, political events often had profound short-term effects.

Twin studies provide an important possibility for demographers to analyze patterns of heritability and to estimate structural models with controls for endowments. These possibilities are increasingly used in the context of fertility and related behaviors. A close congruence between the fertility patterns of twins and that of the general population, however, is an essential pre-condition in order to generalize the results of twin-based investigations of fertility and related behaviors to the general population. In this paper we therefore compare the fertility of Danish twins born 1945--64 to the fertility pattern of the general population born during the same period. Our analyses find a very close correspondence between the fertility pattern of twins and of the general population. There exist only few statistically significant differences, and the primary difference pertains to the fact that female twins have a slightly later onset of childbearing than non-twins. There are virtually no relevant differences between the fertility patterns of dizygotic and monozygotic twins.

Epidemiological research has shown that women who have early and numerous births have reduced risks of being diagnosed with breast cancer. We use U.S. Vital Statistics and Census data and age-period-cohort models to examine whether cohort fertility patterns are associated with breast cancer mortality rates among women aged 40 and older in 1948-2003. Cohorts marked by higher proportions childless at ages 15-24 and lower cumulative second birth rates at ages 15-29 have higher rates of breast cancer mortality. This is the first demonstration that cohort fertility patterns have left a clear imprint on trends in U.S. breast cancer mortality rates.

The overall trend of cancer mortality in Japan has been decreasing since the 1960s (age-standardized death rates for ages 30-69), though trends differ enormously among various forms of the disease. Cancer mortality was heavily influenced by Japanese postwar economic recovery, which led to improved living conditions and better control of infectious agents known to cause some common forms of cancer (stomach, cervical). However, Japanese wealth and development have also been associated with risky personal behaviors (smoking, drinking) and other conditions, leading to increases in cancers with no known or else very weak links to infection. This shift away from infectious and toward non-infectious causes of prevalent forms of cancers is called the "cancer transition," by analogy to Omran's "epidemiologic transition." We suggest that the cancer transition described here in the case of Japan must be a part of efforts to revise and update the epidemiologic transition, which should incorporate new knowledge about the role of infection in chronic disease morbidity and mortality.

Based on a unique data set on the event history of marriage and divorce collected in the In-Depth Fertility Surveys conducted in Shanghai, Shaanxi, and Hebei in 1985 and a multivariate hazards model, this paper investigates the association between divorce risk and socio-demographic factors in China. Controlling for several other socio-demographic factors, we demonstrate that the risk of divorce for women who married before age 18 is twice as high as that of those married after age 20; the risk of divorce of arranged marriages is about 2.6 times as high as that of not-arranged ones. The number of children is highly and negatively correlated with risk of divorce; the traditional son preference does not seem having substantial effects on divorce among women who have one or two children; but the risk of divorce of women who have three or more daughters without a son was 2.2 times as high as that of those women who have three or more children with at least one son. The divorce level in urban areas is higher than that in rural areas. The greater proportion of arranged and early marriages plus some other special factors in a less developed region (Shaanxi) contributes to its higher general divorce rate before 1985, in comparison with the advanced region (Shanghai). The divorce level in Shanghai after 1985 has become higher than that in Shaanxi. It seems that education level is positively related to divorce and labor force participation is negatively related to divorce, but the estimates are not statistically significant. Some explanations of these findings are also discussed in this paper.

Between 1960 and 1995 the black-white difference in male life expectancy in the United States increased from 6.7 years to 8.2 years. To provide insights into why mortality trends have been more adverse for black men than for white men, we investigate which causes of death were principally responsible for changes in the black-white difference in male mortality at ages 15-64 between 1960 and 1995. We find that black-white differences in male mortality varied substantially during this period. The gap increased in the 1960s, declined in the 1970s, and widened in the 1980s-early 1990s. Our findings reveal considerable variation in black-white disparities by cause of death and by age, as well as changes in the relative importance of various causes of death to the black-white male mortality disparity over time. The results suggest that consequences of black-white differences in socioeconomic status, access to quality health care, living conditions, and residential segregation vary by cause of death.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of recent trends in childbearing in neighboring Norway and Sweden. We use indexes produced by applying indirect standardization to register data of these two countries in order to describe and contrast their fertility developments over the last four decades. Our indexes enable us to decompose overall fertility trends into birth-order specific components, and by combining the same kind of data from two countries we get a very accurate picture of various cross-country differences in fertility levels. We demonstrate how Swedish fertility has fluctuated relatively strongly during the whole period while Norwegian fertility has evolved more gradually, at least during the last two decades. A turnaround from decreasing to increasing levels of childbearing is evident in 1977 in both countries while a sudden shift to shorter birth intervals is specific to Sweden in the 1980s and contributed to its more spectacular increase in fertility during that decade.