Institutions and the transition to adulthood: Implications for fertility tempo in low-fertility settings

The number of countries experiencing very low fertility has been rising in recent years, garnering increasing academic, political and media attention. There is now widespread academic agreement that the postponement of fertility is a major contributing factor in the very low levels of fertility that have occurred, and yet most policy discussions have been devoted to increasing the numbers of children women have. We discuss factors in three institutions--the educational system, the labour market and the housing market--that may inadvertently have led to childbearing postponement. We highlight important components of the timing of childbearing, including its changing place within the transition to adulthood across countries and the significance of the demands of childbearing versus childrearing. Using illustrations from Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, we argue that the following all lead to younger childbearing: 1) an open education system whereby it is relatively easy to return to school after having dropped out for a while; 2) a shorter, smoother, easier school-to-work transition; 3) easier re-entry into the labour market after having taken time out for childrearing or any other reason; 4) greater capability of integrating childrearing into a career; 5) easier ability to obtain a mortgage with a moderately small down payment, moderately low interest rate and a long time period over which to repay the loan; and 6) easier ability to rent a dwelling unit at an affordable price. Conversely, reversing any or all of these factors would lead, other things being equal, to postponement of childbearing.

Changing relationships between education and fertility: A study of women and men born 1940-64

Surprisingly, relatively little is known about the relationship between education and completed fertility in low fertility countries and especially the trend in this relationship over time. An inverse relationship is expected, but the topic has been left largely unexplored for at least a generation, and for men the topic is almost completely unexplored empirically. In this paper, we use data from the population registers covering all Norwegians born 1940-64. Among women, the relationship between completed fertility and the educational level attained at age 39 has become substantially less negative. In all the cohorts, better educated women have more often remained childless than the less educated, and they have had later first births, which also contributes to lower subsequent fertility. However, the negative effect of education on higher-order birth rates net of this impact of later motherhood has disappeared in the younger cohorts. Family-friendly policies and ideologies, leading, for example, to better access to high-quality day care, are likely the main engine behind this shift. Among men, a positive relationship has emerged. The better educated become fathers later than others, but fewer remain childless, and there has been an increasingly stimulating effect of education on second- and third-birth rates. We discuss these sex differences in the light of the persistent differences between mother and father roles

Networks and Contexts: Variation in the Structure of Social Ties

A core axiom of sociology is that social structure affects and is affected by human behavior. The term "social structure" conveys two quite different meanings. One meaning is relational, involving networks of ties between individuals or groups of individuals. A second meaning refers to the contexts containing these individuals. Studies of neighborhood and community effects depend on variability in both types of social structure. Using data from multiple villages in Nang Rong, Thailand, this article documents substantial variability in network structure and shows that network structure covaries with context in meaningful ways, suggesting reciprocal effects of changes in both. Finally, it considers implications of variability in network structure, showing that social cohesion affects the likelihood of finding and interviewing former village residents

Social and spatial networks: Kinship distance and dwelling unit proximity in rural Thailand

We address a long hypothesized relationship between the proximity of individuals' dwelling units and their kinship association. Better understanding this relationship is important because of its implications for contact and association among members of a society. In this paper, we use a unique dataset from Nang Rong, Thailand which contains dwelling unit locations (GPS) and saturated kinship networks of all individuals living in 51 agricultural villages. After presenting arguments for a relationship between individuals’ dwelling unit locations and their kinship relations as well as the particulars of our case study, we introduce the data and describe our analytic approach. We analyze how kinship - considered as both a system linking collections of individuals in an extended kinship network and as dyadic links between pairs of individuals -patterns the proximity of dwelling units in rural villages. The results show that in general, extended kin live closer to one another than do unrelated individuals. Further, the degree of relatedness between kin correlates with the distance between their dwelling units. Close kin are more likely to co-reside, a fact which drives much of the relationship between kinship relatedness and dwelling unit proximity within villages. There is nevertheless suggestive evidence of a relationship between kinship association and dwelling unit proximity among kin who do not live together

Population growth and its spatial distribution as factors in the deforestation of Nang Rong, Thailand

Frontiers constitute a major source of global land cover change hot spots, with forests and grass lands being converted into agricultural uses. As such, frontiers provide an opportunity to see how people manipulate the land and their lives in the context of social, cultural and environmental constraints. This paper examines frontier settlement and land cover change in Nang Rong district, Northeast Thailand for the last half century. It uses a Cellular Automata (CA) model to explore the land cover consequences of alternative patterns of settlement in a setting where people establish dwelling units in nucleated villages and work agricultural plots that surround villages. Forested land around the center of a village is converted into agricultural uses in an inverse relationship to the distance from the village center, but frequently modified by biophysical conditions. Land at the center of the village may be reforested after the village is established as a source of shade as well as fruit and other products. Model variation in land cover change is more sensitive to the spatial reach of village households than their temporal reach, suggesting the important role that technology plays in how villagers travel to their fields (walking versus motorized transit)

Employment and household tasks of Japanese couples, 1994-2009

The paper examines changes in the relationship between employment and household tasks of Japanese couples, using data drawn from national cross-sectional surveys in 1994, 2000 and 2009 of persons aged 20–49 and from the 2009 follow-up of the 2000 survey. Wives’ employment is structured by their husbands’ employment time and earning power, as well as by their family situations including the presence and age of children and coresidence with parents. Housework hours of husbands, though very low, increased over time, while wives’ hours decreased. Wives housework time decreases as their employment time increases. Marriage dramatically increases women’s housework time but produces little change in men’s time. Husbands’ housework hours are positively correlated with reported marital satisfaction of both spouses

Nontraditional Family-Related Attitudes in Japan: Macro and Micro Determinants

Attitudinal data are commonly used to measure values, which in turn represent moral doctrines that are resistant to change and are the foundation for societal norms. This article examines changes in the attitudinal climate in Japan. Three national surveys (1994, 2000, and 2009) are used to examine a range of attitudes that measure a) the centrality of marriage and childbearing, b) nontraditional family behaviors, and c) gender roles in the work and family spheres. There is strong evidence of movement toward less-traditional attitudes during 1994–2000, followed by limited change in the 2000s. Period factors were paramount in the 1990s. Across the board, women hold less-traditional attitudes than men, and this difference has increased over time. Both engaging in nontraditional family behaviors (being married but remaining childless) and knowing someone who has engaged in nontraditional family behaviors (cohabitation) causally lead to holding nontraditional attitudes, suggesting mechanisms whereby changes in individual behavior can lead to changes in societal values

Health and the Political Agency of Women

We investigate whether women?s political representation in state legislatures improves public provision of antenatal and childhood health services in the districts from which they are elected, arguing that the costs of poor services in this domain fall disproportionately upon women. Using large representative data samples from India and accounting for potential endogeneity of politician gender and the sample composition of births, we find that a 10 percentage point increase in women?s representation results in a 2.1 percentage point reduction in neonatal mortality, and we elucidate mechanisms. Women?s political representation may be an under-utilised tool for addressing health in developing countries

Child Care Availability and First-Birth Timing in Norway

Both sociological and economic theories posit that widely available, high-quality, and affordable child care should have pronatalist effects. Yet to date, the empirical evidence has not consistently supported this hypothesis. We argue that this previous empirical work has been plagued by the inability to control for endogenous placement of day care centers and the possibility that people migrate to take advantage of the availability of child care facilities. Using Norwegian register data and a statistically defensible fixed-effects model, we find strong positive effects of day care availability on the transition to motherhood