Fertility trends by social status

This article discusses how fertility relates to social status with the use of a new dataset, several times larger than the ones used so far. The status-fertility relation is investigated over several centuries, across world regions and by the type of status-measure. The study reveals that as fertility declines, there is a general shift from a positive to a negative or neutral status-fertility relation. Those with high income/wealth or high occupation/social class switch from having relatively many to fewer or the same number of children as others. Education, however, depresses fertility for as long as this relation is observed (from early in the 20th century).education, fertility, income, occupation, social class, status, wealth

Population Ageing Negatively Affects Productivity

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Can personality predict retirement behaviour? : a longitudinal analysis combining survey and register data from Norway

This study investigates how far personality can predict the timing and routes of people’s retirement. It uses a large comprehensive Norwegian survey, with larger sample size than earlier related studies, providing estimates of personality based on the five-factor model. The survey data are matched with administrative data, allowing observations of retirement over the 2002–2007 period. The analysis distinguishes between the disability and the non-disability retirements. Retirement is investigated using discrete time, competing risk, logistic regression models amongst individuals aged 50–69. Results indicate that personality predicts disability retirement but not non-disability retirement. Neuroticism increases the risk of disability retirement in women. Agreeableness and extraversion may prevent disability retirement, whereas openness may increase the risk of disability in men. Personality effects are generally consistent across models controlling, or not controlling, for well-known predictors of retirement behaviour including education, income and occupational group. The main exception is that poor health explains the effect of neuroticism on women’s disability retirement

New times, old beliefs: Projecting the future size of religions in Austria

The relative sizes of secular and religious populations belong to the most important social characteristics of each country. In the wake of religious change, family behaviour, including marriage and childbearing, is likely to be altered. European demographic trends, including those of late childbearing and low fertility are also likely to change when there is a growth of religious groups where conversion/secularisation rates are low and childbearing levels are high. We project the membership size of the various religious groupings until 2051 for Austria, a country where the religion question is included in the census, allowing detailed and accurate projections to be made. We consider relative fertility rates, religion-specific emigration and immigration, conversion rates and intergenerational transmission of religious affiliation. Our estimates suggest that the Catholic proportion will decrease from 75% in 2001 to less than 50% in 2051. The Muslim population, which grew from 1% in 1981 to 4% in 2001, will represent 14% to 18% of the Austrian population by 2051, and could represent up to 32% of those below 15 years of age. The Protestants’ population share will be stable at around 4%, while up to 34% of the population will be without religion.

Decomposing the change in labour force indicators over time

In this paper we study changes in the size and the composition of the labour force in five OECD countries from 1983 through 2000. We apply a recent decomposition method to quantify the components of the change over time in the crude labour force rate and the mean age of the labour force. Our results show that the change in the crude labour force rate was dominated by the change in age-specific labour force participation rates. For the mean age of the labour force we find that for males the change in the age composition of the population predominately explains the overall change while the results for females are less clear-cut.decomposition method, labor force, labor force indicators, population aging

Secularism or catholicism? The religious composition of the United States to 2043

We project the religious composition of the United States to 2043, considering fertility differences, migration, intergenerational religious transmission and conversion by 11 ethnoreligious groups. If fertility and migration trends continue, Hispanic Catholics will experience rapid growth, expanding from 10 to 18 percent of the population between 2003 and 2043. Protestants could decrease from 47 to 39 percent over the same period, establishing Catholicism as the largest religion among younger age groups. Immigration drives growth among Hindus and Muslims, while low fertility explains decline among Jews. The religiosity of immigrants combined with the low fertility of nonreligious Americans results in a gradual decline, and subsequent reversal of, secularization, with the nonreligious population share expected to plateau before 2043

The Low Fertility Trap Hypothesis: Forces that May Lead to Further Postponement and Fewer Births in Europe

This paper starts from the assessment that there is no good theory in the social sciences that would tell us whether fertility in low-fertility countries is likely to recover in the future, stay around its current level or continue to fall. This question is key to the discussion whether or not governments should take action aimed at influencing the fertility rate. To enhance the scholarly discussion in this field, the paper introduces a clearly defined hypothesis which describes plausible self-reinforcing mechanisms that would result, if unchecked, in a continued decrease of the number of births in the countries affected. This hypothesis has three components: a demographic one based on the negative population growth momentum, i.e., the fact that fewer potential mothers in the future will result in fewer births; a sociological one based on the assumption that ideal family size for the younger cohorts is declining as a consequence of the lower actual fertility they see in previous cohorts; and an economic one based on the first part of Easterlin’s (1980) relative income hypothesis, namely, that fertility results from the combination of aspirations and expected income, and assuming that aspirations of young adults are on an increasing trajectory while the expected income for the younger cohorts declines, partly as a consequence of population ageing induced by low fertility. All three factors would work towards a downward spiral in births in the future. If there is reason to assume that such mechanisms will indeed be at work, then this should strengthen the motivation of governments to take immediate action (possibly through policies addressing the tempo effect) in order to still escape from the expected trap

A cross-country comparison of math achievement at teen age and cognitive performance 40 years later

BACKGROUND Maintaining cognitive functioning through mid- to late-life is relevant for the individual and societal aim of active ageing. Evidence shows considerable stability in individual-level rank-ordering of cognitive functioning, but little attention has been given to cohort performance over the life cycle and macro-level factors that could affect it. OBJECTIVE The main goal of this paper is to address cross-national variation in mental performance from younger to older ages. METHODS Using a quasi-longitudinal approach, we compare the relative country ranking in standardised mathematical test scores of young teenagers in 1964 from the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) and cognitive test performance at mid-life in 2004, based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe(SHARE) for the cohort born between 1949 and 1952. RESULTS Our results show that those countries which had the highest scores in math tests taken by 13-year-old-grade-level students are not the same countries that, 40 years later, have the top performing scores in cognitive tests among mid-age adults. CONCLUSIONS This article highlights the importance of considering country-level influences on cognitive change over the life cycle, in addition to individual characteristics, and provides some descriptive findings that could be incorporated with further research on the link between specific contextual factors and cognitive functioning

Fertility history and use of antidepressant medication in late mid-life: a register-based analysis of Norwegian women and men

Objectives: Life course influences on later life depression may include parenting trajectories. We investigate associations between number and timing of births and use of antidepressant medication in late mid-life using data on the whole Norwegian population. Methods: We estimated logistic regression models to analyse variations in the purchase of antidepressants between 2004 and 2008 by timing of births and number of children among women and men aged 45–73, using Norwegian population register data. We controlled for age, education, marital and partnership status, and (in some models) family background shared among siblings. Results: Mothers and fathers of two or more children were generally less likely to purchase antidepressants than the childless. Mothers who started childbearing before age 22 were an exception, although according to sibling models they were not more likely to purchase antidepressants. All models showed that women who became mothers before age 26 and had only one child had higher odds of medication purchase than the childless. Older age at first birth was generally associated with lower risks of antidepressant purchase. Conclusion: This analysis of high-quality data for a national population indicates that early motherhood, childlessness and low parity are associated with higher usage of antidepressants in late mid-life. Our data did not allow identification of mediating pathways, and we lacked information on early mental and physical health and some other potentially important confounders not shared between siblings. Furthermore purchase of antidepressants is not a perfect indicator of depression. Those concerns aside, the results suggest complex effects of fertility on depression that merit further investigation

Towards a Catholic North America? Projections of religion in Canada and the US beyond the mid-21st century

Religion and religiosity are important identity markers, and changes in a country's religious composition may affect its culture, value orientations and policies. In recent decades the Protestants in both the US and Canada have lost their absolute population majority. In the present study we investigate the future of the religious composition in both the US and Canada jointly until the 2060s taking into consideration changes due to demographic forces, the level and composition of migration, fertility differentials and intergenerational religious transmissions. The joint focus on both the US and Canada allows one to better understand the commonalities and differences between these two nations which are tightly knit in terms of geography, politics, economics and culture. The projections reveal that North America should not become Catholic by mid-century but close to, with an increasing importance of minorities in the religious landscape