Eesti rahvastikuarengu põhisuundumused

Eesti rahvastikku iseloomustab Lääne- ja Põhja-Euroopa sarnane varajane demograafilise ülemineku algus. Sündimus langes alla taaste nivood juba 1920. aastatel. 1960ndate lõpust kasvas põhirahvastiku sündimus 17%. Praeguseks on sündimus oluliselt vähenenud, sündimuskordaja on kukkunud väärtusest 1,3 allapoole. Suur on ka vallassündimuse osakaal – 90% esmassünniga lõppevatest rasedustest algab väljapool juriidilist abielu. Praegusaja rahvastikutaaste põhitrend väljendub rahvastiku vananemises. Praegusaja Eesti ühiskond on paljukeelne. Emakeelena räägitakse Eestis ligi 80 keelt

Long-term fertility development in Baltoscandia

The article is a short overview of some principal fertility trends in Estonia. Finland. Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden. Those countries, from the historical perspective, have been characterized by relatively early start of demographic transition. Also, in period of fertility transition, these countries have demonstrated rather similar developments and formed one of the most homogenous subregions in Europe in this respect. However, post-transitional fertility development has been rather desynchronized between the named countries: not only the Baltic-Scandinavian differences but also the difference between Estonia-Latvia and Lithuania as well as between Sweden and Finland has become important. The noticeable part of this heterogeneity is explained by the relatively stable cohort fertility in Estonia and Latvia while in Finland. Lithuania, and Sweden the birth cohorts have had rather divergent outcomes of their fertility careers. Currently the Baltic countries are characterized by sharp fertility decrease, accompanied by the deep structural transformation of the fertility pattern. The intense aging of fertility, particularly because of postponement of the first child, is in contrast to much smoother development of the same kind in Finland and Sweden

First union formation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: patterns across countries and gender

This article examines the transformation of first union formation in the Baltic countries between the late 1960s and early 1990s, in the context of societal and family-level gender relations. The analyses employ microdata from the European Family and Fertility Surveys program. Our results on the trends indicate that in Estonia and Latvia the shift from direct marriage to cohabitation started well before the fall of socialist regime. Event-history models provide support for a hypothesised association between union formation and gender system, with Lithuania showing more traditional features in both respect, plausibly embedded in long-standing cultural differences between the countries.Baltic countries, gender system, union formation

Internal Migration and Regional Population Dynamics in Europe: Estonia Case Study

Estonia has experienced a long-lasting and strong influence of international migration on regional population growth. Post-war immigrants account for about 36 per cent of the total population, and are concentrated in larger cities of Northern Estonia. Regionally, the relative proportions of the native-born and immigrant origin sub-populations are important for the understanding of population change and internal migration flows in the 1980-1990s. In Estonia, the quality of migration data requires careful assessment. The preservation of Soviet-type record-keeping has reduced data quality in the 1990s, already low, and use of the data should keep data quality problems in mind. Otherwise, false conclusions can be reached. To describe internal migration patterns, it has proved technically feasible and very useful to disaggregate the county population into rural and urban components, and correspondingly, the migration flows into four directions (urban-urban, urban-rural, rural-urban and rural-rural). During the 1980s the pattern of population growth and internal migration has changed in Estonia. Reflecting the turnaround in long-term population processes, migration development reached the advanced stage with more or less regionally balanced in- and out-migration flows and decreasing importance of net migration. Accordingly, to understand current trends and patterns, explanations must be sought from the 1980s which has served a starting point for the present trends rather than from the period of economic transition in the 1990s. As a part of the turnaround, the century-long persistent rural depopulation has come to an end and the moderate growth has started reflecting natural population increase as well as deurbanization. In the 1980s two developments have occurred in parallel: migratory increase of rural population led by a deurbanizing native-born population, and continued urban population growth as a result of the population momentum of pre-transition immigrants. In future decades, the urban deconcentration will probably be the underlying trend in Estonia. In Estonia, noticeable proportion of territory and population is located in islands. However, the island population does not show any systematic difference in the type of internal migration. Particularly, the depopulation of island populations, observed in several comparable European cases, is not occurring. Each life-course stage was found to have its specific migration pattern, more stable than the pattern for the total population. In many cases the changes of internal migration are determined by the change in the proportion of population in different life-course stages. Additionally, the life-course approach has been useful in demonstrating the features of the present Estonian internal migration pattern which appear closer to the countries of comparable in demographic development, more or less regardless of the significant differences in the level of economic development. Among life-course groups, in Estonia the older working age population was characterized by the strongest deurbanization intensities in 1995. The same group has also undergone the largest modification of migration pattern during the economic transition (1987-1995)

Lateralized delay period activity marks the focus of spatial attention in working memory: evidence from somatosensory event-related brain potentials

The short-term retention of sensory information in working memory (WM) is known to be associated with a sustained enhancement of neural activity. What remains controversial is whether this neural trace indicates the sustained storage of information or the allocation of attention. To evaluate the storage and attention accounts, we examined sustained tactile contralateral delay activity (tCDA component) of the event-related potential. The tCDA manifests over somatosensory cortex contralateral to task-relevant tactile information during stimulus retention. Two tactile sample sets (S1, S2) were presented sequentially, separated by 1.5 s. Each set comprised two stimuli, one per hand. Human participants memorized the location of one task-relevant stimulus per sample set and judged whether one of these locations was stimulated again at memory test. The two relevant pulses were unpredictably located on the same hand (stay trials) or on different hands (shift trials). Initially, tCDA components emerged contralateral to the relevant S1 pulse. Sequential loading of WM enhanced the tCDA after S2 was presented on stay trials. On shift trials, the tCDA's polarity reversed after S2 presentation, resulting in delay activity that was now contralateral to the task-relevant S2 pulse. The disappearance of a lateralized neural trace for the relevant S1 pulse did not impair memory accuracy for this stimulus on shift trials. These results contradict the storage account and suggest that delay period activity indicates the sustained engagement of an attention-based rehearsal mechanism. In conclusion, somatosensory delay period activity marks the current focus of attention in tactile WM