Financial impact of divorce on children and their families

This article reviews the evidence pertaining to the financial impact of divorce on children and their families. While there is some variance as to the degree of change, the preponderance of evidence suggests that women and children experience substantial financial declines upon divorce while divorced men's relative income remains stable or even increases. Given this decline in women and children's economic status, the impact of public assistance programs is next considered followed by a discussion of child support and property settlements. The authors then present a discussion of roadblocks to economic recovery and recommend policies to improve the financial status of divorced mothers with children.

Thirty years of Demography

In this paper, we present a content analysis of Demography, the official journal of the Population Association of America. Our results reflect patterns of change and stability in a number of areas, including: subjects covered, number of authors, gender of authors, type of data used, source of data used, affiliation of authors and statistical procedures employed. The data suggest that the field of population research has become increasingly bureaucratized and complex, while at the same time continuing to focus on familiar research subjects. A relatively small number of population research centers contribute disproportionately to the journal.

Writing the names: marriage style, living arrangements, and first birth interval in a Nepali society

Using data from a Nepali population, this analysis argues that marriage style and postmarital living arrangements affect coital frequency to produce variations in the timing of first birth after marriage. Event history analysis of the first birth interval for 149 women suggests that women's autonomy in marriage decisions and marriage to cross-cousins accelerate the pace of entry into first birth. Extended-household residence with reduced natal kin contact, on the other hand, significantly lengthens the first birth interval. These findings are consistent with previous arguments in the literature while offering new evidence for the impact of extended-family residence on fertility.

Legal status and the stability of coresidential unions

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, we examine the effect of the legal status of coresidential unions on the likelihood of dissolution. We find that legal unions are much more stable than nonlegal unions. In addition, current legal status is more important for predicting stability of union than is legal status at the initiation of the union. We also find that the effect of current legal status remains constant over various durations of unions and that legalizing a nonlegal union has little effect beyond that expected on the basis of a occupying a particular legal status.

Gender of children and birth timing

We address the impact of the gender of children on birth timing. Our findings suggest that a preference to balance the gender of children affects the timing of births, not a preference for either sons or daughters. At parity 2, women with children of the same sex time a third birth more rapidly than women with a boy and a girl. At parity 1, women with a boy time second births more rapidly than women with a girl. This seemingly anomalous finding is explained, however, by the fact that women with boys are more likely than women with girls to be married at any point in time and thus less likely to have disrupted fertility careers.

The impact of age and children on remarriage: further evidence

"This article addresses the impact age and presence/number of children have on the remarriage probabilities of divorced women [in the United States]. Following Koo and Suchindran..., an interaction between these two factors is posited, with children having an effect on the remarriage chances only of younger and older women. In addition, a third factor, dissolution measurement, is considered because remarriage intervals measured from separation and from divorce can be quite different." The data are from the 1973 National Survey of Family Growth. "Analyses conducted separately by race indicate that (1) dissolution measurement can make a difference in the estimated effect of both age and presence/number of children on remarriage probabilities for both blacks and whites, (2) net of numerous controls, older women and women with more children of both races tend to remarry at the slowest pace, and (3) age and presence/number of children interact for whites but not for blacks."

Historical and subgroup variations in the association between marriage and first childbirth: a life-course perspective

As an institution, marriage supposedly sets the context within which love, sex, and childbearing are legitimated. For women, the roles of wife and mother are tightly interwoven—being married carries the risk of becoming preg nant. It is expected that childbirth will follow relatively soon after marriage. In other words, marriage and childbearing are supposed to be linked through both sequence and timing. This paper takes a life-course approach in examining em pirically the patterning of marriage and first childbirth among white and black women first married between 1950 and 1971. The results indicate considerable historical and racial differences in the joint arrangements of marriage and childbirth. A major distinction is that the historical variation among white women was a consistent shortening of maritally conceived first-birth intervals over the 1950s followed by a consistent lengthening of these intervals over the 1960s and early 1970s. Among black women, on the other hand, historical varia tions have been less consistent and have involved the sequencing rather than the timing of maritally conceived births.

Early marriage, premarital fertility, and marital dissolution: results for Blacks and Whites

This research investigates the impact of age at first marriage and premarital fertility status on subsequent marital dissolution for both black women and white women first married between 1950 and 1970. Results, using multivariate proportional hazards models, indicate that (1) premarital births, but not premarital pregnancies, increase the risk of marital dissolution; (2) an increasing age at the first marriage reduces the risk of marital separation and divorce, but not monotonically; (3) blacks differ from whites in that they are less responsive to the effects of a premarital birth or a young age at first marriage in increasing the likelihood of marital instability; and (4) an older age a first marriage offsets somewhat the destabilizing effects of a premarital birth.

Childlessness and marital satisfaction: a further assessment

Utilizing a stratified random sample of respondents married after the age of 21, this article estimates models of marital satisfaction for theoretically relevant groups of women--voluntarily childless wives, undecided wives, postponing wives, and mothers. Results indicate that all three groups of childless wives have higher mean levels of marital satisfaction than do mothers. More important, the results also suggest that the processes generating marital satisfaction for wives differ depending not only on the presence or absence of children, but also on future childbearing intentions among the childless. Specifically, models of marital satisfaction for the voluntarily childless and undecideds are quite different from those for postponers and mothers. These results are discussed in terms of differences in marital structures and differences in the implied systems of reciprocities characterizing marital interaction and bargaining.

Community availability of contraceptives and family limitation

This study examines the impact of contraceptive service availability on contraceptive use in Korea, Mexico, and Bangladesh. Using World Fertility Survey Data on once-married females and their communities of residence, the multivariate analysis finds that the community level of contraceptive availability directly affects the likelihood of current use, net of the effects of community development, education, parity, and marital duration. The results are supportive of the recent policy emphasis on maximizing the geographic availability of contraceptive services.

A components method for measuring the impact of a family planning program on birth rates

One of the major goals of family planning programs worldwide has been to reduce the level of fertility in hopes of slowing the rate of natural increase and promoting social and economic development. Such programs have now been in existence for sufficient lengths of time to have had an impact on fertility levels. In general countries with organized family planning programs, marked declines in fertility levels have been observed. The extent to which such declines may be credited to organized programs has not been rigorously measured because an appropriate research methodology has been lacking. This paper describes one method of directly linking declines in fertility levels to the contraceptive protection experienced by a population. The contribution of organized family planning programs is estimated by decomposing the amount of total contraceptive protection into within-program and outside-program sources.

Contraceptive use effectiveness in Indonesia

A brief review of recently tabulated contraceptive continuation and pregnancy rates for Java-Bali and their constituent provinces. It was found that IUD continuation rates are higher than those for either pill or condom although considerable variation occurs between provinces. East Java and Bali seem to be recording the most success in use-continuation, while the urban areas of Jakarta and Yogyakarta are having the least success. With respect to age and parity, the older, higher parity acceptors tend to use for longer periods of time irrespective of method used. Similarly, age and parity do not seem to affect the relationship between pill, IUD, and condom continuation rates. Examining reasons for termination, we find pill acceptors more likely to terminate for physical, emotional, or health reasons than either IUD or condom acceptors. When broken down by age and parity, the low age and parity groups show a much greater likelihood of termination in order to have an additional child.

The relationship between Schoen's index of mortality and a log-linear measure

This paper discusses the mathematical relationship between Schoen's index of mortality and an index derived from log-linear models for making compositionally controlled comparisons of the occurrence of an event in a population. The merits of each and the contributions of the log-linear formulation are discussed.