Abbasi-Shavazi, Mohammad Jalal. "Effects of Marital Fertility and Nuptiality on Fertility Transition in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1976-1996."
No. 84. 2000. 37 pages.
Abstract:
International stereotypes tend to portray Iran as a ‘traditional’ society
resistant to many aspects of social change. Based on this assumption, the
generally held view is that Iran is experiencing one of the highest fertility
rates in the world, and that demographic transition has not started yet. Recent
statistics has proved, however, that the reality is profoundly different. Iran
has experienced an astonishing fertility decline in recent years. This
study aims to review the trends and changes in fertility over the period 1976 to
1996. The Islamic Republic of Iran experienced a moderate increase in fertility
during 1976-1986, mainly due to the relaxation of family planning programs by
the government. On the other hand, fertility began to decline in 1984, and has
sharply declined since 1988. The question has arisen to what extent this
significant change has been due to the changes in nuptiality and marital
fertility. The own-children data from the 1986 and 1996 censuses allow us to
analyse the change in fertility in the last two decades, and to decompose the
change in fertility into two main components of nuptiality and marital
fertility. The result has shown that around 85 percent of the changes is due to
marital fertility, which suggests that most of the fertility of Iranian women
has been controlled within marriage. Around 15 percent of the change is
attributable to changes in nuptiality, specifically an increase in age at
marriage and thus a reduction in the proportion of women married at early
ages. After reviewing the literature on the demographic transition in
Iran, the paper will first analyse the changes in nuptiality patterns during the
last two decades. Second, the changes in fertility trends and levels will
briefly be discussed for the period 1976 to 1996. Then the change of fertility
will be decomposed into the two components of nuptiality and marital fertility.
Tentative explanations for the dramatic decline in marital fertility will be put
forward; and the future prospects of the fertility decline, policy implications
and issues for further studies will be discussed.
http://demography.anu.edu.au/workingpapers.shtml#2000
Denton, Nancy A., Elena Vesselinov, Glenn D.
Deane, and Lawrence E. Raffalovich. "The Appreciation of Place :
a case study of metro Washington, D.C. neighborhoods." No.
2001-1. Draft, April 2001. 32 pages.
Abstract:
Our paper is a critical examination of the
relationship between median housing value and racial composition for
neighborhoods in the Washington DC metro area. The effect of neighborhood racial
composition on homeownership and the value of those owned homes have been the
topics of considerable prior research, but little of that research has examined
how the median home values, measured at the neighborhood level, behave across
neighborhoods, for different racial groups within neighborhoods, and over time.
Exploring the meaning of housing value in relation to racial composition is
important for people purchasing houses in particular neighborhoods, but also for
those who use neighborhood level data in multi-level models. The relationship
between racial composition and housing value is quite complex, but even more
complex is the relationship between racial composition and housing value change
over a decade. Using tract level data from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses, we
estimate seemingly straightforward regressions and use model criticism, as well
as other EDA techniques, to demonstrate the complexity of the relationship
between racial composition and housing value. Specially, we ask: Is the
relationship between housing value and residential racial composition adequately
captured by "percent black?" Is there a "tipping" point in
the neighborhood racial composition that shifts the direction of the
relationship with housing value? What happens when we shift to housing
appreciation rather than housing value as the dependent variable? Do political
boundaries such as center city versus suburb or county change the relationship
between housing value and neighborhood racial composition? For those who
use tract data to measure neighborhood effects on individuals, the messiness of
our results suggests caution. Neighborhood measures that sound simple cover a
wide variety of different types of neighborhoods, and change in these measures
is not all that easy to interpret.
http://www.albany.edu/csda/workpap.html
South, Scott J., Eric Baumer, and Amy Lutz. "Interpreting Community Effects on Youth Educational Attainment."
No. 2001-2. Draft date November 2000. Working paper published April
2001. 44 pages.
Abstract:
Longitudinal data from 1,128 respondents in the
National Survey of Children are used to examine factors that help explain the
higher rates of school dropout and lower rates of high school graduation in
socioeconomically distressed communities. We find that about one-third of the
observed positive effect of community socioeconomic disadvantage on high school
discontinuation can be explained by the educational behaviors of peers, a result
broadly consistent with epidemic models of neighborhood effects. A smaller
proportion of the impact of neighborhood socioeconomic status on youth
educational attainment can be attributed to youth’s lower educational
aspirations and higher rates of residential mobility in poor neighborhoods.
Despite their centrality to theories of neighborhood effects, adolescents’
delinquent behavior, attachment to school and parents, and parental control over
adolescent behavior do little to mediate the impact of community disadvantage on
high school dropout and graduation. We also find no significant effect of
neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on college attendance once family SES
and other background variables are controlled.
http://www.albany.edu/csda/workpap.html
Frejka, Tomas and Gérard Calot. "Cohort childbearing age patterns in low-fertility countries in the late 20th century: Is the postponement of births an inherent element?"
WP 2001-009. April 2001. 24 pages.
Abstract:
Major changes in the age patterns of fertility were characteristic of fertility
trends following the Second World War. The paper provides an overview and
analysis of changes in age patterns of cohort childbearing in low-fertility
countries during the second half of the 20th century. In
Western countries cohorts born around 1940 had earlier childbearing than those
of 1930. Early childbearing persisted among cohorts born during the 1940s,
although generally at a lower level. Major shifts occurred among the cohorts
born during the 1950s. These women incurred considerable fertility deficits when
young and compensated, at least in part if not totally, with surpluses when they
reached their upper twenties and thirties. Many of the postponed births were
made up. The decline in fertility among young women continues in the cohorts
born during the 1960s and 1970s. In the formerly socialist countries the
fertility decline among young women commenced with those born in the late 1950s
and is continuing among those born in the 1960s and 1970s. In almost all
low-fertility countries each cohort of young women born in the 1960s and 1970s
is having fewer children than preceding ones. It appears unrealistic to expect
that these cohorts will eventually attain replacement levels because of the
considerable deficits incurred when young. Their fertility when older would have
to be extraordinarily high even to realize completed fertility of the cohorts
born around 1960, which on average was below replacement. A postponement of
births regarded as temporary by the couples involved with many of the postponed
births never being born, as well as conscious decisions to have fewer births
than previous cohorts, appear to be continuing processes in most countries.
http://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/PapersPres.htm#Work
Andersson, Gunnar and Dimiter Philipov. "Life-table representations of family dynamics in Sweden and Hungary: initiation of a project of descriptions of
demographic behavior." April 2001. WP
2001-10. 38 pages.
Abstract:
In this paper, we present an investigation of
patterns in childbearing among foreign-born women in Sweden from the early 1960s
and onwards. It is performed in a similar way as a previous study by the author
who analyzed childbearing patterns of Swedish-born women in that country by
applying event-history techniques to population-register data. We base our study
on the longitudinal information on childbearing and migration of 446.000 women
born abroad who had ever lived in Sweden before the end of 1999. We display
period trends in fertility by birth order for some aggregated groups of
foreign-born women and find that developments over time have been quite similar
for Swedish- and foreign-born women but that there exist important differences
in levels of childbearing intensities between women stemming from different
countries. When we examine patterns in childbearing by time since migration to
Sweden, we find that such differences in most cases are due to the fact that
immigrants tend to display higher levels of childbearing shortly after
immigration. We conclude that migration and family building in many cases
are interrelated processes and that it is always important to account for time
since migration when fertility of immigrants is studied.
http://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/PapersPres.htm#Work
Andersson, Gunnar. "Childbearing patterns of foreign-born women in Sweden."
April 2001. WP 2001-11. 43 pages.
Abstract:
In this paper, we present a system of descriptions of family-demographic
behavior in developed countries. We use life-table techniques in order to
describe the experiences of men, women, and
children in processes related to family formation and family dissolution. We
develop a large number of descriptive measures and apply them to survey data
from Sweden and Hungary. The paper demonstrates the potential of our descriptive
system for further cross-country comparisons of the demographic behavior in
European countries.
http://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/PapersPres.htm#Work
Kotlikoff, Laurence J., Kent Smetters and Jan Walliser.
"Finding a Way Out of America's Demographic Dilemma." #8258.
April 2001. 63 pages.
Abstract:
Notwithstanding the rosy short-term fiscal scenarios being advanced in Washington, the demographic transition presents the United States with a very serious fiscal crisis. In 30 years there will be twice the number of elderly, but only 15 percent more workers to help pay Social Security and Medicare benefits. A realistic reading of the government demographic projections suggests a two thirds increase in payroll tax rates over the next three to five decades. However, these forecasts ignore macroeconomic feedback effects. In particular, they ignore the possibility that the nation will have more capital per worker as the number of elderly wealth-holders rises relative to the number of young workers. More capital per worker would mean higher worker productivity, higher real wages,
and the lower return to capital that worries Wall Street. It would also mean a bigger payroll tax base and a smaller rise in tax rates. On the other hand, a higher payroll tax will leave workers with less after-tax income out of which to save and, therefore, fewer retirement assets than would otherwise be the case. Thus capital deepening is not a foregone conclusion. This study develops a dynamic general equilibrium life-cycle simulation model to study these conflicting forces. The model is the first of its kind to admit realistic patterns of fertility and lifespan extension. It also features heterogeneity, within as well as across generations, and, thus, can be used to study both intra- and intergenerational equity. Unfortunately, our baseline demographic simulation, which assumes the continuation of
current social security policy, shows deteriorating macroeconomic conditions that will exacerbate, rather than mitigate, our fiscal problems. Real wages per effective unit of labor fall 4 percent over the next 30 years and 10 percent over the century. For Wall Street, this bad news about real wages is good news.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8258
Dickens, Richard and David T. Ellwood. "Whither Poverty in Great Britain and the United States? The Determinants of Changing Poverty and Whether Work Will Work."
#8253. April 2001. 83 pages.
Abstract:
Scholars emphasize that poverty in Britain has risen sharply since the late 1970s. Meanwhile in the United States, both official figures and traditional poverty scholars report sharp declines in poverty. We seek to provide a comparison of poverty levels in Britain and the US based on a set of common definitions. We then proceed to ask what factors-demographic, economic, or policy-account for the observed changes in poverty in the two nations and what role could policy play in reducing poverty? We develop a procedure that allows one to trace out the relative impacts of altered demographics, rising wage inequality, work changes, and policy innovations in explaining changing poverty patterns. We find that the forces influencing poverty differ between nations and across absolute
and relative poverty measures. Demographic and wage change is a dominant force in both nations. Britain has experienced a dramatic rise in workless households while the US has simultaneously had a sharp fall. These differences had a sizable impact on absolute poverty in both nations and a significant impact on relative poverty in Britain. Government benefits directly reduced relative and absolute poverty considerably in Britain over this period but had little impact in the US. However, changing patterns of benefits and work suggest that policy changes have significantly increased work in the US, particularly among single parents. In Britain, policy changes may have had the reverse effect, reducing work among many groups. The UK government has committed itself to reducing child poverty by half over the next 10 years and to its abolition within 20 years, largely through policy changes designed to make work pay. We conclude that any purely work-based strategy, which doesn't tackle demographics and wage dispersion, may not have a dramatic effect on relative poverty.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8253
Oberholzer-Gee, Felix and Joel Waldfogel. "Electoral Acceleration: The Effect of Minority Population on Minority Voter Turnout."
#8252. April 2001. 42 pages.
Abstract:
Political outcomes are well understood to depend on the spatial distribution of citizen preferences. In this paper, we
document that the same holds for the individual decision to be politically active. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence on turnout, we show that citizens are more likely to vote if they live in a jurisdiction with a larger number of persons sharing similar political preferences. As a result, changes in the identity of a district's median citizen lead to even larger changes in the identity of its median voter, a phenomenon we term electoral acceleration. We present evidence that electoral acceleration is in part due to the structure of media markets. Candidates find it easier to direct campaign efforts at larger groups because many existing media outlets cater to this audience.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8252
Meara, Ellen. "Why is Health Related to Socioeconomic Status?"
#8231. April 2001. 49 pages.
Abstract:
There are striking disparities in morbidity and mortality by socioeconomic status (SES) within the United States. I examine pregnancy and health at birth to investigate possible mechanisms linking SES and health. I find that a limited set of maternal health habits during pregnancy, particularly smoking habits, can explain about half (one third) of the correlation between SES and low birth weight among white (black) mothers. I show evidence on three hypotheses to explain why health habits vary by SES. First, differences in knowledge by SES create only modest differences in health behaviors by SES, explaining about 10 percent of differential smoking by education. Second, women respond to common knowledge differentially by SES, so that knowledge and its use combined explain up to one third of differential smoking by education. Third, the most important determinants of differential health behavior are 'third variables,' or variables that can simultaneously determine health habits and SES. Finally, I show evidence that network effects at the family level exacerbate differences in behavior regardless of the source.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8231
Neumark, David and Wendy A. Stock. "The Effects of Race and Sex Discrimination Laws."
#8215. April 2001. 67 pages.
Abstract:
The question of the effects of race and sex discrimination laws on relative economic outcomes for blacks and women has been of interest at least since the Civil Rights and Equal Pay Acts passed in the 1960s. We present new evidence on the effects of these laws based on variation induced first by state
anti-discrimination statutes passed prior to the federal legislation and then by the extension of anti-discrimination prohibitions to the remaining states with the passage of federal legislation. This evidence improves upon earlier time-series studies of the effects of anti-discrimination legislation. It is complementary to
more recent work that revisits this question using data and statistical experiments that provide 'treatment' and 'comparison' groups. We examine the effects of race and sex discrimination laws on employment and earnings, in each case focusing on outcomes for black females, black males, and white females relative to white males. Overall, we interpret the evidence as corroborating the general conclusion that race discrimination laws positively impacted the relative
employment and earnings of blacks, although the evidence is less dramatic than that reported in other research, and there are some cases (in particular, earnings effects for black males) and periods for which we find little positive impact. We find some evidence that sex discrimination/equal pay laws boosted the relative earnings of black and white females. Finally, we find that sex discrimination/equal pay laws reduced the relative employment of both black women and white
women.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8215
Azuma, Yoshiaki and Herschel I. Grossman. "Educational Inequality."
#8206. April 2001. 24 pages.
Abstract:
This paper develops a theoretical model that relates changes in educational inequality to the combined eects of innovations that have increased the relative demand for more educated labor and innovations that have increased ability premiums. Under the assumption that in the long run individual decisions to become more educated equalize the lifetime earnings of more educated workers and comparable less educated workers, our model yields two novel implications: First, given the existence of ability premiums, an innovation in the relative demand for more educated labor increases educational inequality in the short run, but, ceteris paribus, would decrease educational inequality in the long run. Second, in the long run innovations that increase ability premiums cause educational
inequality to be larger than otherwise. In applying our theory to recent changes in educational inequality in the United States, we suggest that increases in ability premiums are dampening the long-run response of the relative supply of more educated workers that otherwise would reverse previous increases in educational inequality.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8206
Blau, Francine D. and Lawrence M. Kahn. "Understanding International Differences in the Gender Pay Gap."
#8200. April 2001. 63 pages.
Abstract:
This paper tests the hypotheses that overall wage compression and low female supply relative to demand reduce a country's gender pay gap. Using micro-data for 22 countries over the 1985-94 period, we find that more compressed male wage structures and lower female net supply are both associated with a lower gender pay gap. Since it is likely that labor market institutions are responsible for an important portion of international differences in wage inequality, the inverse relationship between the gender pay gap and male wage inequality suggests that wage-setting mechanisms, such as encompassing collective bargaining agreements, that provide for relatively high wage floors raise the relative pay of women, who tend to be at the bottom of the wage distribution. Consistent
with this view, we find that the extent of collective bargaining coverage in each country is significantly negatively associated with its gender pay gap. Moreover, the effect of pay structures on the gender pay gap is quantitatively very important: a large part of the difference in the gender differential between high gap and low gap countries is explained by the differences across these countries in overall wage structure, with another potentially important segment due to differences in female net supply.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8200
Alesina, Alberto, Rafael Di Tella and Robert MacCulloch.
"Inequality and Happiness: Are Europeans and Americans Different?"
#8198. April 2001. 37 pages.
Abstract:
The answer to the question posed in the title is 'yes.' Using a total of 128,106 answers to a survey question about happiness,' we find that there is a large, negative and significant effect of inequality on happiness in Europe but not in the US. There are two potential explanations. First, Europeans prefer more equal societies (inequality belongs in the utility function for Europeans but not for Americans). Second, social mobility is (or is perceived to be) higher in the US so being poor is not seen as affecting future income. We test these hypotheses by partitioning the sample across income and ideological lines. There is evidence of inequality generated' unhappiness in the US only for a sub-group of rich leftists. In Europe inequality makes the poor unhappy, as well as the leftists. This favors the hypothesis that inequality affects European happiness because of their lower social mobility (since no preference for equality exists amongst the rich or the right). The results help explain the greater popular demand for government to fight inequality in Europe relative to the US.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8198
Lakdawalla, Darius, Dana Goldman, and Jay Bhattacharya. "Are the Young Becoming More Disabled?"
#8247. April 2001. 31 pages.
Abstract:
A fair amount of research suggests that health has been improving among the elderly over the past 10 to 15 years.
Comparatively little research effort, however, has been focused on analyzing disability among the young. In this paper, we argue that health among the young has been deteriorating, at the same time that the elderly have been becoming healthier. Moreover, this growth in disability may end up translating into higher disability rates for tomorrow's elderly. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, we find that, from 1984 to 1996, the rate of disability among those in their 40s rose by one full percentage point, or almost forty percent. Over the same period, the rate of disability declined for the elderly. The recent growth in disability has coincided with substantial growth in asthma and diabetes among the young. Indeed, the growth in asthma alone seems more than enough to explain the change in disability. Therefore, we argue that the growth in disability stems from real changes in underlying health status.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8247
Attanasio, Orazio P. and Carl Emmerson. "Differential Mortality in the UK."
#8241. April 2001. 35 pages.
Abstract:
In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/89 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socio-economic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after conditioning on the initial health status, wealth rankings are important determinants of mortality and the evolution of the health indicator in the survey. For men aged 65 moving from the 40th percentile to the 60th percentile in the wealth distribution increases the probability of survival by between 2.4 and 3.4 percentage points depending on the measure of wealth used. A slightly smaller effect is found for women of between 1.5 and 1.9 percentage points. In the process of estimating these effects we control for non-random attrition from our sample.
http://papers.nber.org/papers/W8241
Robbins, Jessica M., Ewbank, Douglas C. "Dementia in Parkinson's Disease: Demographic models and estimates."
WPS 01-01. April 2001. 25 pages.
Abstract not available.
http://www.pop.upenn.edu/aging/aging_wps.html
Kniesner, Thomas J. and Anthony T. LoSasso. "Intergenerational Labor Market and Welfare Consequences of Poor Health."
No. 37. March 2001. 45 pages.
Abstract:
Our research provides new econometric evidence concerning partial economic risk sharing between a frail elderly parent and an adult child. We estimate a jointly
determined limited dependent variables system explaining the parent’s entry into a nursing home, the adult child’s visits to the parent, and the adult child’s labor
supplied. The time allocation of adult sons is unaffected by a parent’s frail health. Adult daughters who visit a frail elderly parent daily decrease their annual labor
supplied by about 1,000 hours annually, largely through labor force non-participation. The implied welfare loss to the daughter from a frail elderly parent in need of
frequent visits is about $180,000. Our results run counter to the moral hazard argument against long-term care insurance and clarify the two sides’ positions in the
policy debate over the degree of generosity of recently proposed tax credits for adult children who help care for sick aged parents.
http://www-cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/cprwps/wps37abs.htm
Brown, John C. and Timothy W. Guinnane.
"The Fertility Transition in Bavaria." # 821. April 2001. 51 pages.
Abstract:
The decline of human fertility that occurred in Europe and North America in the
nineteenth century, and elsewhere in the twentieth century, remains a topic of
debate largely because there is no accepted explanation for the event.
Disagreement persists in part because researchers have rarely used the detailed
quantitative information necessary to form adequate tests of alternative
theories. This paper uses district-level data from Bavaria to study the
correlates of the decline of fertility in that German kingdom in the nineteenth
century. Bavaria’s fertility transition was later and less dramatic than in
other parts of Germany. The European Fertility Project, the most influential
study of the European fertility transition, used very large units of analysis
and unrefined measures of economic and social conditions. This project concluded
that the fertility transition reflected the simultaneous adoption of new ideas
about contraception, and was not caused by adaptation to changing economic and
social circumstances. We use smaller units of analysis, better measures of the
possible determinants of fertility, and more appropriate econometric methods to
study Bavaria’s fertility transition. Our results indicate that the European
Fertility Project was right about the role of religion and secularization, but
missed an important role for the economic and structural effects stressed by
economic historians.
http://www.library.yale.edu/socsci/egcdis2.html
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Center for Demography and Ecology Information Services
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Email: pjackson@ssc.wisc.edu