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The Gendered Effect of Co-residence on Health. Reconciling Labour and Autonomy responses
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International migration is an important dimension to study the integration of societies, globally; especially if studied at the family level, to get a better know-how of culture and society. For this, data has been collected through open-ended interview schedules, case studies, and non-participant observation from the Doaba region of Punjab. Interviews were done with women, who are living without their husbands/ male members of the family. It was found that there was a shift from conservative societies to more open societies in the Doaba region of Punjab. Women feel more autonomous, free, and independent with respect to family decisions. The women acted as the head of the household and are taking all family decisions. But “patriarchal norms” and male dominance still exist in Punjabi society. The migration of their husbands results in a temporary increase in tasks and responsibilities of women. The change in roles also creates a dilemma among the left-behind women about their position, which leads to an identity crisis. Women generally perceived these new roles as burdens hence, should not be confused with changing gender roles.
To assess the gender gap in life expectancy at birth in India and its major states as well as the timing of male-female life expectancy at birth crossover. To analyze the age-specific contributions to the changing gender differences before and after the crossover at the national and sub-national levels. We have used sample-survey-based age-specific mortality data available for the periods 1970–2018 to construct abridged life tables. The contribution of different age groups to the gender gap is estimated by using Arriaga’s method of decomposition. During 1981–85 female life expectancy at birth caught up with male life expectancy at birth for India and by 2005 all major states completed the crossover. The male-female crossover in life expectancy at the national level in the early 80s is remarkable in the face of continued female disadvantage from birth till adolescence, even for some richer states. We provide evidence that gender difference in longevity in favour of females is largely a function of adult age groups and younger age groups contribute negatively to the gender gap in life expectancy at birth in most states. Juxtaposing the results from contribution in an absolute number of years and their relative contribution change before and after the crossover, it is established that although the adult and old age groups contribute the highest in the absolute number of years before and after the crossover, the contribution of the reproductive age groups and childhood years in the recent time is most relevant in relative terms.
In developing countries, labor out-migration has led to millions of married couples living apart from each other. Male out-migration brings economic benefits to the families in places of origin, but also leads to profound changes in the lives of the left-behind wives. It is unclear how the husband’s out-migration influences the health of wives, let alone the mechanisms through which any effects are transmitted. Using data from the Indian Human Development Survey (2004–2005 and 2011–2012), we estimated lagged dependent variable models (N=19,737) to assess the health impact of husbands' out-migration for women in India. The results showed that left-behind wives had lower self-rated health than wives of non-migrants. Part of this negative health impact was driven by the low remittances sent by the migrant husbands. For both women in nuclear families and women in extended families, the negative health impact was partially attributable to women’s added responsibilities, such as animal care and managing a bank account. For women in nuclear families, the negative health effect of husbands’ migration has been partially suppressed by women’s increased autonomy.
Restrictive social norms and strategic constraints imposed by family members can limit women's access to and benefits from social networks, especially in patrilocal societies. We characterize young married women's social networks in rural India and analyze how inter‐generational power dynamics within the household affect their network formation. Using primary data from Uttar Pradesh, we show that co‐residence with the mother‐in‐law is negatively correlated with her daughter‐in‐law's mobility and ability to form social connections outside the household, especially those related to health, fertility, and family planning. Our findings suggest that the mother‐in‐law's restrictive behavior is potentially driven by the misalignment of fertility preferences between the mother‐in‐law and the daughter‐in‐law. The lack of peers outside the household lowers the daughter‐in‐law's likelihood of visiting a family planning clinic and of using modern contraception. We find suggestive evidence that this is because outside peers (a) positively influence daughter‐in‐law's beliefs about the social acceptability of family planning and (b) enable the daughter‐in‐law to overcome mobility constraints by accompanying her to health clinics.
This study set out to investigate the effects of multiple roles on depressive symptoms in women. The role of women was divided into worker, household worker, spouse, parent, and caregiver roles to identify the differences in depressive symptoms according to the number of roles, role-fulfillment, and role-combination. Using the sixth raw data of the 2016 Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families for analysis, the data had 6198 respondents who did not have missing values in the major variables. There are three main findings of this study: (1) as the number of roles increased, depressive symptoms of women was decreased. In addition, role-combination was a more meaningful element; (2) women who did not have any roles tended to be more depressed; (3) the caregiver role showed a negative effect on depressive symptoms of women. This study was to include the various aspects of women’s roles and to determine the effects of multi-roles on depressive symptoms in women.
Although power struggles between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law in the South Asian household remain an enduring theme of feminist scholarship, current policy discourse on 'women's economic empowerment' in the Global South tends to focus on married women's power over their husband; this neglects intergenerational power dynamics. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the processes involved in young, married women's negotiations of control over cash inside the extended household in a contemporary rural Nepali setting. We conducted a grounded theory study of 42 households from the Plains of Nepal. Our study uncovered multiple ways in which junior wives and husbands in the extended household became secret allies in seeking financial autonomy from the rule of the mother-in-law to the wife. This included secretly saving up for a household separation from the in-laws. We argue these secret financial strategies constitute a means for junior couples to renegotiate the terms of Kandiyoti's (1988) 'patriarchal bargain' wherein junior wives traditionally had to accept sub-servience to their husband and mother-in-law in exchange for economic security and eventual authority over their own daughters-in-law. Researchers, activists and policy-makers concerned with women's economic empowerment in comparable contexts should consider the impact of intergenerational power relations on women's control over cash.
The rising share of farm work in India undertaken by women – a phenomenon commonly referred to as the feminization of agriculture – raises questions about the changing character of rural India, particularly with regards to women's social and economic roles. Based on an analysis of four sets of occupational data drawn from the Indian Census (1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011), this paper demonstrates that, as a process driven largely by the outmigration of men from rural areas, the feminization of agriculture has no necessary relationship with wider INDICATORS of women's social or economic empowerment. Instead, women's growing participation in agriculture appears to be strongly related to several indicators of poverty. This paper concludes that women's growing contribution of labour in agriculture adds to the already heavy work burdens of most rural women, thereby further undermining their well-being, and suggests that the feminization of agriculture may better be described as the feminization of agrarian distress.
Objective
To examine associations between grandmothers’ knowledge and infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices and to test whether the associations are independent of or operate via maternal knowledge.
Design
Cross-sectional household survey data from households with a child under 5 years ( n 4080). We used multivariate regression analyses, adjusted for child, maternal, grandmother and household characteristics, and district-level clustering, to test associations between grandmothers’ knowledge and IYCF practices for children aged 6–24 months living with a grandmother. We used causal mediation to formally test the direct effect of grandmothers’ knowledge on IYCF practices v . maternal knowledge mediating these associations.
Setting
Two hundred and forty rural communities, sixteen districts of Nepal.
Subjects
Children aged 6–24 months ( n 1399), including those living with grandmothers ( n 748).
Results
We found that the odds of optimal breast-feeding practices were higher (early breast-feeding initiation: 2·2 times, P =0·002; colostrum feeding: 4·2 times, P <0·001) in households where grandmothers had correct knowledge v . those with incorrect knowledge. The same pattern was found for correct timing of introduction of water (2·6), milk (2·4), semi-solids (3·2), solids (2·9), eggs (2·6) and meat (2·5 times; all P <0·001). For the two pathways we were able to test, mothers’ correct knowledge mediated these associations between grandmothers’ knowledge and IYCF practices: colostrum feeding ( b =10·91, P <0·001) and the introduction of complementary foods ( b =5·18, P <0·001).
Conclusions
Grandmothers’ correct knowledge translated into mothers’ correct knowledge and, therefore, optimal IYCF practices. Given grandmothers’ influence in childcare, engagement of grandmothers in health and nutrition interventions could improve mothers’ knowledge and facilitate better child feeding.
We use data from the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics time use survey to investigate shares of domestic work along two dimensions; routine and non-routine activities, and housework done for the whole household versus housework done for oneself only. We argue that the latter is an underutilised marker of responsibility for household management and serving others. Exploiting data from matched household members, we examine relative shares of fathers and mothers, and also of co-resident young people aged 15–34 (416 households), to include inputs from the younger generation as well as the parental couple. Mothers do the greatest share of routine housework and housework for others; parents are relatively equal in the shares of non-routine housework and housework done for themselves only. Young people take on a minimal share of total household work, particularly tasks done for others in the family. Parents’ employment configuration is associated with adjustments in shares between them, with no effect on children’s shares.
This article explores the relationship between family support dynamics and the quality of life of elderly Chinese migrants through the analysis of 35 qualitative interviews conducted in Auckland, New Zealand. Findings show that intergenerational reciprocity is embedded in Chinese migrant families for pragmatic purposes. Elderly parents tend to provide more support to their children than they receive, especially in co-residential households. The imbalanced reciprocity impacts negatively on their quality of life. In contrast, living apart from adult children helps to maintain balanced reciprocity, independence, and a better quality of life. Taking the elderly Chinese migrants’ perspective, this article contributes to sociological debates about the changing dynamics of family support, and their impact on elderly migrants’ quality of life.
We argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of India because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women. We set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste-based status concerns on the time allocation of women. We then use the all-India National Sample Survey data for the year 2004-05 and the Time Use Survey for six states of India for the year 1998-99 to empirically test these hypotheses. After controlling for a host of correlates, we find that the ratio of women's market work to men's declines as we move up the caste hierarchy. This ratio falls as family wealth rises and the decline is steeper for the higher castes. Finally, the effect on women's market work of higher education is weaker for the higher castes. These findings lend support to our theory and to the view that, through its emphasis on family status, caste plays a pivotal role in undermining the autonomy of women. Our paper has implications for how culture impinges on the rate at which poverty in developing countries can be reduced.
This paper examines the determinants of female autonomy within households in a developing country. In particular, we investigate the relative contributions of earned versus unearned income in enhancing women's autonomy and the role of employment outside of their husband's farm. In a simple theoretical model, it is demonstrated that earned income could be more important than unearned income in empowering women. Using data from rural Bangladesh, empirical estimations confirm this prediction and also reveal the surprising fact that it is not employment per se but employment outside their husbands' farms that contributes to women's autonomy. The data also point to the importance of choosing the correct threat point in theoretical analyses of female autonomy.
This paper shows that increases in the minimum wage rate can have ambiguous effects on the working hours and welfare of employed workers in competitive labor markets. The reason is that employers may not comply with the minimum wage legislation and instead pay a lower subminimum wage rate. If workers are risk neutral, we prove that working hours and welfare are invariant to the minimum wage rate. If workers are risk averse and imprudent (which is the empirically likely case), then working hours decrease with the minimum wage rate, while their welfare may increase.
The separation of migrants from the family unit, as a result of labour migration, can have profound effects on family organization and the lives of family members. Using data from a 2006 survey of 1,680 married women from 56 villages in southern Mozambique, we examined the relationship between men's labour migration and the decision-making autonomy of women who stayed behind. The results show that both men's cumulative migration history and current migration status are positively associated with women's autonomy, and that the effects on autonomy may persist even after the man's return. Three intervening factors-women's employment outside the home, lower fertility, and residential independence from extended family members-did not fully mediate the effects of men's labour migration. This is consistent with the assumption that the migrant's absence has a 'direct' effect on his wife's autonomy.
We highlight the role of home productivity and social norms in explaining the gender gap in labor force participation (LFP), and the non-monotonic relationship of women's LFP with their education in India. We construct a model of couples’ time allocation decisions allowing for both market and home productivity to improve with own education. Incorporating individual preference to produce a minimum level of the home good due to social norms, we show that our theoretical model can closely replicate the U-shaped relationship between women's education and their labor supply. Our analysis suggests that home productivity, along with social benchmarks on couples’ time allocation to home good, can be critical determinants of women's labor supply in developing countries.
In a highly patriarchal society such as India, and many Middle Eastern, African, and East Asian countries, coresidence with the mother-in-law is ubiquitous during the early years of marriage. During the period when women have to make crucial fertility decisions, they are under the supervision of the mother-in-law. Using the National Family Health Survey 2005–2006, and estimation strategies such as propensity score (PS) weighted regressions and a difference-in-differences type approach with PS matching, we estimate the causal effect of coresidence during pregnancy on maternal anemia among rural women in India. Here, coresidence and non-coresidence during pregnancy define our treatment and control, respectively. Women coresiding with both in-laws had fewer children, were younger, more educated, wealthier, and less likely to be Muslim and from scheduled castes and tribes compared to non-coresident women. Results indicate that the mother-in-law is a potentially valuable resource during pregnancy. For example, living with the mother-in-law reduced the likelihood of moderate to severe anemia by 13.2 percentage points compared to no coresidence. Under joint coresidence with both in-laws, the effect dropped to 8.5 percentage points. Moreover, women living with the mother in-law were 16.8 percentage points more likely to receive any iron supplementation. From a public health perspective and for policy making, the results indicate that safe motherhood programs should be augmented with awareness generation components which target the mother-in-law. Furthermore, pregnant women in nuclear families need particular attention.
Child stunting in India exceeds that in poorer regions like sub-Saharan Africa. Data on over 168,000 children show that, relative to Africa, India's height disadvantage increases sharply with birth order. We posit that India's steep birth order gradient is due to favoritism toward eldest sons, which affects parents' fertility decisions and resource allocation across children. We show that, within India, the gradient is steeper for high-son-preference regions and religions. The gradient also varies with sibling gender as predicted. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that India's steeper birth order gradient can explain over one-half of the India-Africa gap in average child height.
Self-assessed health (SAH) measures are widely used in models of health and health inequalities. Such models assume that SAH is a reliable measure of health status. We utilise a unique feature of a national longitudinal survey to examine the consistency of responses to a standard SAH question that is asked twice to the same individual in close temporal proximity in up to three waves (2001, 2009, and 2013). In particular, we analyse whether the consistency of responses varies with personal characteristics. The main analysis sample includes 18,834 individual-year observations. We find that 57% of respondents provide inconsistent reports at least once. Characteristics that are associated with significantly higher inconsistencies are age, education, cognitive ability, and time between responses. The results suggest that there are systematic differences in the ability of individuals' to self-evaluate and summarise their own health. Consequently, failure to account for such error may lead to large estimation biases in models of health outcomes, particularly with respect to the relationship between education, cognitive ability, and health.
The relationship between health and work is frequently investigated using self-assessments of disability from social surveys. The complication is that respondents may overstate their level of disability to justify non-employment and welfare receipt. This study provides new evidence on the existence and magnitude of justification bias by exploiting a novel feature of a large longitudinal survey: each wave respondents are asked identical disability questions twice; near the beginning and end of the face-to-face interview. Prior to answering the second disability question, respondents are asked a series of questions that increase the salience of their employment and welfare circumstances. Justification bias is identified by comparing the variation between the two measures within-individuals over time, with the variation in employment status over time. Results indicate substantial and statistically significant justification bias; especially for men and women who receive disability pensions.
This article explores ideals and experiences of the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship using semistructured interviews with 46 members of 22 families living in one Indian village. Ideally, the relationship is characterized by love and understanding, where one’s mother-in-law or daughter-in-law is like one’s own daughter or mother. In practice, the relationship varies in quality. Some women experienced affectionate, high-quality relationships, whereas others’ relationships were characterized by hurtful exchanges and not speaking. Previous literature portrays the relationship as negative, but these results point to the relevance of positive aspects as well. I also suggest that these ideals and experiences are shaped by the joint family system. The joint family system contributes to the strongly positive ideal, whereas the tensions that women experience arise from the contradictory family locations that they occupy within that system. Daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law are simultaneously strangers and close family members.
Joint household structures in which several generations co-reside in a single house are common across developing countries. Such households may confer benefits on all the family members through household public goods with the patriarch exercising greater control over resources. Therefore, the household structure may affect the bargaining power of its members. This paper estimates the effect of joint versus nuclear household structure in India on the autonomy of women and their labour force participation and the heterogeneity in the effects by income, caste, and region. I use an instrumental variable approach and find that women living in nuclear households have greater decision-making power.
The empirical evidence of the effect of intergenerational coresidence by elderly parents and their adult children on parental health remains inconclusive. This study provides a new estimate of the coresidence effect by addressing non-random selection and heterogeneity in the treatment effect. Examination of Japanese data reveals: (i) an insignificant, negative average coresidence effect; (ii) a significant, negative coresidence effect on the treated; and (iii) that parents with unmet care needs and limited resources, typically widowed, disabled mothers, are most likely to suffer from a significant, negative coresidence effect. The results support the theory that coresidence may worsen elderly parents’ health because care burdens on their adult children create disincentives for the parents to invest in longevity. The significant heterogeneity in the coresidence effect suggests potential scope for a better-targeted long-term care program.
Research into intrahousehold finances challenges key assumptions about the family as a unitary whole, investigates the extent of sharing within it, examines mechanisms of control and allocation of resources, and reveals the personalized nature of different monies. This article presents an overview of research on within-household distribution (understood as both outcome and process). It discusses major questions addressed, including inequalities between (gendered) individuals and the potential reasons for these. It outlines significant developments and debates, within qualitative research in particular, in relation to the unit of analysis (traditionally, the married couple), the texture and meaning of financial dealings within couples, and the tensions between autonomy and equal sharing as values. It then discusses several key methodological challenges, and concludes by highlighting some policy implications of central research messages. Throughout, it draws on and discusses the other articles in this special section, which explore key methodological issues in researching within-household distribution.
Studies of money management and control will have more cross-cultural relevance
if the family context of money across generations is taken into account. The study of money
management and control in middle-income nuclear and joint family house- holds in urban India
illustrates the importance of examining money flows within the wider family context because there
is a two-way flow of money beyond the married couple – between parents and adult children,
siblings and other members of the extended family. In the three or four generational joint
family, control and manage- ment at the household level is not necessarily duplicated for the
constituent couples. We draw on open-ended interviews of 40 persons from 27 urban
middle-income households in North India, between November 2007 and January 2008, to show that
the male control of money is the dominant pattern. This pattern is linked to the ideology of male
dominance that is found among the middle, lower middle and struggling households, particularly in
non-metropolitan households. The upper- middle-class households predominantly in metropolitan
households show a pattern of joint or independent control. The focus is on the couple’s money
decisions within the context of the wider family.
The linking of money, family and migration has become increasingly important with the rise in Indian remittances to US$ 21.7 billion in 2004, the largest amount of remittances in the world. The economic importance of remittances has meant that they have primarily been studied as money flows resulting from direct migration. Some attention has been paid to their economic impact at the local, regional and national levels in India. In this article, I argue that sociologists and anthropologists have much to contribute to the study of remittances, as a social phenomenon linked to family and migration. The emergence of a transnational Indian family also means the development of a special kind of transnational family money, where money is equated with or measured against filial care. In the global context of migration, remittances are one of the ways families negotiate shifting arrangements of care, responsibility and security for the young, for women and for the elderly. These perspectives will help develop the sociology of money in India, connecting it to migration, family, marriage and gender relationships.
Time-diary data from representative samples of American adults show that the number of overall hours of domestic labor (excluding
child care and shopping) has continued to decline steadily and predictably since 1965. This finding is mainly due to dramatic
declines among women (both in and out of the paid labor market), who have cut their housework hours almost in half since the
1960s: about half of women's 12-hour-per-week decline can be accounted for by compositional shifts—such as increased labor
force participation, later marriage, and fewer children. In contrast, men's housework time has almost doubled during this
period (to the point where men were responsible for a third of housework in the 1990s), and only about 15% of their five-hour-per-week
increase can be attributed to compositional factors. Parallel results on gender differences in housework were obtained from
the National Survey of Families and Households estimate data, even though these produce figures 50% higher than diary data.
Regression results examining factors related to wives' and husbands' housework hours show more support for the time-availability
and relative-resource models of household production than for the gender perspective, although there is some support for the
latter perspective as well.
In this study we contrast two South Indian villages which offer women very different employment opportunities. Many women in Village I roll beedis, which are crude hand-rolled cigarettes. The structure of beedi work was designed to meet the needs of the beedi contractor, but inadvertently it has provided women with substantial autonomy. In Village II very few women work for pay. We argue that these different employment opportunities affect women's autonomy, which in turn influences important demographic outcomes. More precisely, we argue that greater autonomy will increase contraceptive use among women who want no more children. We find strong support for this hypothesis. But, because there are few competing employment opportunities in Village II, women in that Village have received substantially more education than those in Village I. This higher level of education is also associated with greater contraceptive use. Thus, overall, the level of contraceptive use does not vary greatly between villages. More generally, this study shows that fertility decline occurs, and that low fertility can exist, in very different settings.
This article examines the problem of care provision for elderly people in Java, a contemporary developing society characterised by lack of formal welfare services, nuclear family organisation and high levels of childlessness. A similar socio-demographic, cultural and economic regime existed in historical Northwest Europe, where it has been seen as having contributed to the early emergence of community based old-age care and low involvement of wider kin networks. Here the role of kin in providing old-age care in a nuclear family system is re-examined by drawing on longitudinal data of elderly people's life histories and support networks in a village in East Java. The central argument is that the identification of elders most vulnerable to a lack of care and support in old age requires understanding the nature and functioning of kin networks over time. The paper discusses three key aspects of networks-network membership, exchanges within networks and network dynamics-and arrives at a characterisation of different kin networks on the basis of size, composition, location and social status. By focusing on the effects of a specific crisis, namely the loss of a wife, on care outcomes in old age, it is possible to determine what kinds of kin networks are best able to adjust to a sudden change in older people's circumstances and protect them from declines in welfare. This reveals the importance, especially for childless elderly people, of extended, heterogeneous and well-connected kin networks.
Scholars traditionally argued that industrialization, urbanization, and educational expansion lead to a decline in extended families and complementary rise in nuclear families. Some have suggested that such transitions are good for young married women because living in nuclear families benefits their health. However, extended families may also present advantages for young women's health that outweigh any disadvantages. Using the Indian National Family Health Survey, this article examines whether young married women living in nuclear families have better health than those in patrilocal extended families. It also examines whether young married women's living arrangements are changing over time and, if so, how such changes will affect their health. Results show that young married women living in nuclear families do not have better health than those in patrilocal extended families. Of eight health outcomes examined, only five differ significantly by family structure. Further, of the five outcomes that differ, four are patrilocal extended-family advantages and only one is a nuclear-family advantage. From 1992 to 2006, the percentage of young married women residing in nuclear families increased, although the majority remained in patrilocal extended families. This trend toward nuclear families will not benefit young women's health.
This article explores the transformation of the gendered practice of filial piety in China, which traditionally places sons at the centre and relegates daughters to a peripheral role within their natal families. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in a rural community in north-eastern China, this article suggests a transformed opinion on filial piety, considering daughters as more filial, as is vividly expressed by the Chinese saying “A daughter is like a little quilted vest to warm her parents' hearts.” Meanwhile, elderly parents have modified traditional standards of filial practice to encompass a desire for an expression of intimate care, respect and practical support from adult children. Further examination suggests three major factors contributing to the transformation of the gendered practice of filial piety: reinterpreted intergenerational relations, women's increased filial practice to their natal parents, and an increased desire of the elderly for an emotional bond with their children.
While the impact of remittances upon the economic conditions of the sending communities has received much attention, the effects of international migration on women's position in society among the left-behind have not been adequately explored. This paper examines the changes in the left-behind women's position at the family level as a result of the migration of adult men overseas. Data came from a demographic surveillance system covering 70 villages in Bangladesh. All migrant families having at least one male member working abroad for more than six months were identified in the study villages in 1996. A comparable number of non-migrant families were selected at random from the same villages to yield a total sample of 1030 families. In-depth interviews were conducted with adult women of the sample families. Findings reveal that the overseas migration of adult males has a significant positive association with women's decision-making capacity and education of girls in the migrant families. The remittances as well as the influence of secular values have reduced the practice of dowry in marriages. Multivariate analysis suggests not only that remittances have increased the financial capacity of the migrant families, but also that secular influences from overseas might have modified the position of women when the role of other socio-economic factors is controlled. The study concludes that the overseas migration of adult men can create a context for change of the women's position in traditional communities. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The 52nd round of National Sample Survey data was used to explore gender differences in the living arrangements of older persons in India. Data demonstrate that older women, aged 60 and older are more likely to live alone than older men, after controlling for demographics, socioeconomic characteristics, health status, economic independence, and property ownership. Economic independence is a statistically significant determinant of living arrangements for both older men and women. Worse health in terms of physical immobility increases the likelihood of living alone or with spouse only for older men. Results indicate that having sons decreases the likelihood of living alone for older women, particularly if they are immobile. In contrast, immobility has no significant association with living arrangement choice for older men who have no children or only have daughters, and instead significantly increases the likelihood of living alone for older women with only daughters.
Free time has the potential to reduce time pressures, yet previous studies paradoxically report increases in free time concurrent with increases in feeling rushed. Using U.S. time diary data from 708 individuals in 1975 and 964 individuals in 1998, we review the evidence on trends in free time and subjective perceptions of feeling rushed, and reexamine the relationship between free time and time pressure. We find that women's time pressure increased significantly between 1975 and 1998 but men's did not. In addition, the effects of objective time constraints vary by gender. Whereas more free time reduces men's perceptions of feeling rushed at both time points, among women, free time marginally reduced time pressure in 1975 but no longer reduced time pressure in 1998. Our findings suggest that persistent inequality in gendered time-use patterns is paralleled by gendered experiences of time pressure.
This paper explores the interrelation between health and work decisions of older workers. For this, two issues are of relevance. Firstly, health and work may be endogenously related because of direct causal effects of health on work and vice versa, and because of unobservables that may affect both observed health and work outcomes. Secondly, social surveys usually contain self-assessed health measures and research indicates that these may be subject to endogenous, state-dependent reporting bias. A solution to the 'Health and Retirement Nexus' therefore requires an integrated model for work decisions, health production and health reporting mechanisms. We formulate such a model and estimate it on a longitudinal dataset of older Dutch males. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Family researchers have suggested that shared decision control is important for coping with stressful demands at home, whereas occupational stress theorists view personal decision control as an essential coping resource. We studied the effects of home demands, personal decision control, and shared decision control at home on burnout and satisfaction with life, using Karasek’s job-demands-control model to gauge home stress and its outcomes. Participants were 133 mothers employed in secretarial and managerial jobs. We hypothesized that shared control would correlate more strongly with burnout and satisfaction with life than would personal control. In multiple regression analyses, demands had independent main effects on both outcomes. Shared control significantly predicted satisfaction with life, but not burnout, and personal control predicted neither. It is suggested that in families (as in teams), shared decision control may be a more potent coping resource than personal control.
Summary This study investigates old age security as a possible motivation for high fertility, using information gathered by means of questionnaires and participant observation in an Indian village during 1975-76. Results indicated that such motivation may be quite weak, and hence that population policies aimed at lowering the economic value of children through public social security programmes would achieve little. A variety of evidence pointed to the importance of economic assets, mainly land, in assuring security in old age rather than an abundance of sons. Moreover, given a low expectation of life the necessity to provide support to the aged was infrequent, a fact which seemed to be appreciated by the surveyed villagers.
Self-reported health (SRH) is one of the most frequently employed measures for assessing income-related health inequalities between counties. A previous study has shown that 28% of respondents changed their assessment of their health status when asked a SRH question on two occasions in the same survey (first as part of self-completed questionnaire and then in a personal interview). This study re-examines this issue using another survey where SRH was again asked twice of respondents, but this time the personal interview was first and self-completion second. We find the same variation in responses, but the predominant direction is away from the 'extreme' categories 'Excellent' and 'Poor' which is the opposite direction to the previous study. We therefore conclude that the most likely explanation is a mode of administration effect that makes people less likely to choose the extreme categories in a self-completion questionnaire, but not a personal interview. However, this effect has a relatively minor impact on measures of inequality. This is due to a large proportion of the movement (i.e. movement to the middle) not being related to income and hence does not systematically impact on the cumulative distribution of health across this measure of socio-economic status.
The transformation of work during China’s rapid economic development is associated with a substantial but little noticed re-allocation of traditional farm labor among women, with some doing much less and some much more. This paper studies how the work, time allocation, and health of non-migrant women are affected by the out-migration of others in their household. The analysis finds that the women left behind are doing more farm work than would have otherwise been the case. There is also evidence that this is a persistent effect, and not just temporary re-allocation. For some types of women (notably older women), the labor re-allocation response comes out of their leisure.
The patriarchal structure of the traditional Chinese family suggests that sons, more than daughters, provide financial support to elderly parents. The norm of receiving support in old age primarily from sons, however, may have been undermined by dramatic demographic, economic, and cultural changes occurring over the last several decades in China, especially in urban areas. We examine gender differences in adult children's financial support to parents using a recent dataset ("Study of Family Life in Urban China") collected in 1999 (N = 1,801). The results show that married daughters, especially those living with parents, provide more financial support to parents than married sons do. This significant gender difference can be primarily explained by daughters' resources, such as education and income.
Comparison of two major studies conducted by National family health survey (NFHS-2) in 1998-1999 and NFHS-3 in 2005-2006 shows that prevalence of obesity among Indian women has elevated from 10.6% to 12.6% (increased by 24.52%). The prevalence is more profound in the women of age between 40-49 years (23.7%), residing in cities (23.5%), having high qualification (23.8%), belonging to Sikh community (31.6%) and households in the highest wealth quintile (30.5%). Highest percentage of obese women is found in Punjab (29.9%). Although this number seems small in the international perspective, it is significant because of the sheer size of population in India. While the problem of under-nutrition still exists in many parts of India, the additional burden of obesity due to increasing sedentary lifestyle, junk food habits in some urban and economically sound areas is really alarming. Prevention and control of this serious problem through awareness programmes to adopt diversified nutritional food and healthy lifestyle are strongly recommended.
This study explores the hypothesis that the mother's position within household power relations--her autonomy with respect to other household members--influences her ability to provide for the health of her children. We argue that in the context of the Arab Middle East, a woman's structural position within the household is a good indicator of her relative autonomy: if she is the daughter-in-law in a vertically extended residential unit, she has less autonomy than if she is head or co-head of household. Our analysis is based on data collected from 1341 households in 1985 as a part of the Follow-up Health and Population Assessment of four urban settlements in Amman, Jordan. They include measures of the child's weight and age, plus a variety of socioeconomic factors. We analyze the effect of the mother's autonomy on child nutritional status within a multiple regression framework that controls for rival hypotheses. In particular, we investigate whether it is the availability of other potential child-care substitutes, particularly the grandmother, that influences child nutrition rather than household structure. We also look at household income, mother's education, the area of residence, and the child's sex. Our results show a strong negative influence associated with having a mother whose autonomy in the household is low. This effect does not disappear when mother's age and education, and household size and composition are taken into consideration. Nor is it a proxy for the higher household incomes characteristic of extended-family residential units with their multiple earners.
It is well documented that women have generally higher morbidity rates than men. In line with this women are also more absent from work due to sickness. This paper considers one popular explanation of the morbidity difference in general and of the difference in sickness absence in particular, viz. that women to a greater extent than men are exposed to the 'double burden' of combining paid work with family obligations. We discuss theories of role overload and role conflict, which both assume that the combination of multiple roles may have negative health effects, as well theories of role enhancement, which assume positive health effects of multiple roles. Using two large Norwegian data sets, the relationship between the number of and the age of children on the one hand and sickness absence on the other is examined separately for men and women and for a number of theoretically interesting subpopulations of women defined in terms of marital status (also taking account of unmarried cohabitation), level of education, and working hours. Generally speaking the association between children and sickness absence is weak, particularly for married people of both genders. To the extent that married persons with children are more absent than married persons without children, this is largely due to respiratory conditions. The relationship between children and sickness absence is somewhat stronger for single, never married mothers, but not for single mothers who have been previously married or for women living in unmarried cohabitation. The findings thus provide little support for either role overload/conflict or role enhancement theories. The possibility that these effects are both present and counterbalancing each other or that they are confounded with uncontrolled selection effects can not, however, be ruled out.