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.

Schools, Schooling, and Children's Support of Their Aging Parents

Intergenerational transfers play an important role in individuals' lives across the life course. In this paper I pull together theories on intergenerational transfers and social change to inform our understanding of how changes in the educational context influence children's support of their parents. By examining multiple aspects of a couple's educational context, including husbands' and wives' education and exposure to schools, this paper provides new information on the mechanisms through which changes in social context influence children's support of their parents. Using data from a rural Nepalese area I use multilevel logistic regression to estimate the relationship between schooling, exposure to schools, and the likelihood of couples giving to their parents. I find that both schooling and exposure to schools itself have separate, opposite effects on support of aging parents. Higher levels of schooling for husbands was associated with a higher likelihood of having given support to husbands' parents. On the other hand, increased exposure to schools for husbands and wives was associated with a lower likelihood of having given to wives' parents. Findings constitute evidence that multiple motivations for intergenerational support exist simultaneously and are related to social context through different mechanisms

Health Services, Schools, Attitudes, and Contraceptive Use: Tests of a Theoretical Model Among Rural Nepalese.

This dissertation uses new, highly detailed measures of dimensions of social context to advance our understanding of both attitudinal and programmatic mechanisms through which social context influences individual behavior. To illustrate, I focus on the relationship between dimensions of social context, specifically health services and schools, and contraceptive use in Nepal. Using data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study I employ multiple estimation techniques including multilevel-logistic and OLS regressions and discrete-time hazard modeling. To investigate the potential role of attitudinal mechanisms I explore how the health service and school contexts influence individuals’ attitudes about contraceptive methods, family size and composition, children, family, and non-family behaviors and how both context and these attitudes independently influence individuals’ contraceptive use. I find that women with positive attitudes about contraceptive methods and less family-oriented attitudes had higher rates of contraceptive use. Furthermore, women’s attitudes about children and family had strong effects independent from those of attitudes about contraception, indicating that these less closely connected attitudes play an integral part in women’s contraceptive use. When investigating the role of programmatic mechanisms I examine the separate effects of the provision of family planning, child, and maternal health services and, for schools, the effects of curriculum, teacher gender and training, students’ gender, and education costs. Because health service providers and schools are associated with a specific place, as new ones are built or existing ones change the services they offer, the distribution of these dimensions across physical space changes. Furthermore, because information about health services and schools is transmitted throughout communities through social channels, their potential realm of influence is also geographically disperse. Consequently, I use an expanded conceptualization of the influence of social context and estimate models with geographically weighted measures of health services and schools that incorporate all the providers and schools in the study area. My analyses using these geographically weighted measures indicate that these dimensions of health services and schools all influence contraceptive behavior. I also find evidence that women’s attitudes about children, the importance of childbearing, and roles within the family are mechanisms through which health services and schools influence contraceptive use.Ph.D.SociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57611/2/sbrauner_1.pd

Explaining religious differentials in family-size preference: Evidence from Nepal in 1996

This paper presents an examination of how religio-ethnic identity, individual religiosity, and family members’ religiosity are related to preferred family size in Nepal. Analyses of survey data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study show that socioeconomic characteristics and individual experiences can suppress, as well as largely account for, religio-ethnic differences in fertility preferences. These religio-ethnic differentials are associated with variance in particularized religious theologies or general value orientations (like son preference) across groups. In addition, individual and family religiosity are both positively associated with preferred family size, seemingly because of their association with religious beliefs that are likely to shape fertility strategies. These findings suggest improvements in how we conceptualize and empirically measure supra-individual religious influence in a variety of settings and for a range of demographically interesting outcomes

Women's employment trajectories in a low-income setting: Stratification and change in Nepal

Background: Across the globe, employment for pay outside the home plays a key role in the lives of women, and increasing the proportion of women involved in high-quality jobs is a critical component of reaching several sustainable development goals. While existing research from high-income societies demonstrates that women's employment is not constant over the life course, relatively less is known about women's employment trajectories in low-income countries. Objective: We examine employment trajectories among women in rural Nepal, accounting for job type, employment intensity, and earnings. Methods: Using eight years of quarterly employment data from the 2016 Female Labor Force Participation and Child Outcomes Study component of the Chitwan Valley Family Study, we identify typologies of employment trajectories by conducting sequence and cluster analyses. Results: First, half of the women in our sample were never employed in the study period. Second, among women who were ever employed, there were considerable transitions into and out of the workforce. Third, women's employment trajectories are largely determined by job type (wage labor, salaried jobs, and self-employment), with little movement across job types. Additionally, self-employed women and those with salaried jobs had higher earnings and higher employment intensity than women with wage labor jobs. Conclusions: We see intense stratification into job types, including no employment at all, and substantial transitions into and out of the workforce among workers. Women experience many employment disruptions over the life course, with little sign of upward employment mobility. Contribution: This study provides new empirical portraits of women's employment in low-income settings by investigating the multiple dimensions of women's employment from a life course perspective

Women\u27s employment and Children\u27s education: Longitudinal evidence from Nepal

This study examines how maternal employment is related to children\u27s school enrollment in rural Nepal. Using the Chitwan Valley Family Study we combine over 30 years (1974-2008) of yearly data on mother\u27s employment and their children\u27s education. Results reveal heterogeneity by gender, social status, and type of work. Children from historically disadvantaged social groups were more likely to be in school when their mothers started working. This was largely driven by mothers with jobs that allowed them to more easily combine work and family tasks (i.e., those self-employed in the home). In fact, maternal self-employment outside the home was associated with boys dropping out of school. Additionally, we find evidence that some of the observed relationship between maternal wage labor and children\u27s school enrollment is due to household-level selection effects on mother\u27s work

Explaining religious differentials in family-size preference: Evidence from Nepal in 1996

10.1080/00324728.2014.995695Population Studies69123-3