Teenage fertility, socioeconomic status and infant mortality

The paper examines the relationship between infant mortality and a complex measure of socioeconomic status for evidence of diminution. In data on counties in the United States with a minimum of 20 infant deaths over the 5-year period 1971–75, no evidence of a declining relationship between socioeconomic status and infant mortality was found. Both level of community affluence and racial composition of the population exerted direct effects on levels of infant deaths. In addition, both socioeconomic status and racial composition exhibited indirect effects which operated through teenage childbearing. When total infant mortality was subdivided, teenage fertility serves as a mediating variable in the link between socioeconomic status and neonatal mortality, but not for the postneonatal components. Given the nearly equivalent total effect of socioeconomic status on infant mortality, it is concluded that the classic division into neonatal (supposedly a function of biological and genetic agents) and postneonatal (traditionally attributed to social and environmental agents), may be too crude to allow the contemporary effects of the socioenvironmental milieu to be evaluated effectively.

Female employment and reproductive behavior in Taiwan, 1980

The impact of female employment on fertility preferences and behavior is examined with data from a 1980 national sample of Taiwanese women. The guiding hypothesis is that the greater the involvement of women in the impersonal market sector, the lower the fertility preferences, the longer the first birth interval, and the lower the actual fertility. Findings reveal that female employment in Taiwan is only weakly related to reproductive behavior. Even with increased participation of women in the modern market sector, female employment apparently has little impact on fertility preferences or behavior. Implications are drawn for policies aimed at lowering fertility.

A note on desired family size and contraceptive use in rural Egypt

The influence of fertility preferences on contraceptive use is examined among a sample of low income, rural Egyptian women. The findings reveal that while overall use of contraceptives was at modest levels, one-third of respondents who wanted no more children were currently practising contraception. Moreover, fertility preference emerged as the strongest predictor of contraception among the series of social and demographic factors examined.

Family size in successive generations: the effects of birth order, intergenerational change in lifestyle, and familial satisfaction

Studies of family size in successive generations have found a small but persistently positive effect of size of family of orientation. Recent work has suggested that this relationship may be influenced by birth order, intergenerational change in lifestyle, and familial satisfaction. Data from a 24-year longitudinal study of women in Pennsylvania indicate that number of siblings does influence size of family of procreation. More important, this relationship is stronger among women who were first-born that later-born, stronger for those not experiencing intergenerational change than for those who changed, and stronger among those who at age 16 were satisfied with their parental family than for those who were dissatisfied.

Direct high-temperature ohmic heating of metals as liquid pipes

When a sufficiently high electric current is passed through a liquid metal, the electromagnetic pressure pinches off the liquid metal and interrupts the flow of current. For the first time the pinch effect has been overcome by use of centrifugal acceleration. By rotation of a pipe of liquid metal, tin or bismuth or their alloys, at sufficiently high speed, it can be heated electrically without intermission of the electric current. One may now heat liquid metallic substances, by resistive (ohmic) heating, to 5000 degrees K and perhaps higher temperatures.