Childbearing and psycho-social work life conditions in Sweden 1991-2000

In Sweden, a dramatic fall in fertility coincided with recession and high unemployment during the 1990s. Recent research has shown that the precarious labor market has been one factor contributing to women postponing family formation. Studies have also shown that during the 1990s, the degree of negative psycho-social stress in work life increased in certain trades (care and education, and commerce) which are dominated by female employees. In the present paper, I focus on the interaction between psycho-social work conditions as defined by Robert Karasek and the likelihood of childbearing. As data material, the Swedish Level of Living Surveys of 1991 and 2000 are used. The research questions are: (1) Does job strain affect the likelihood of having the first, second and third child? Are there any differences between women and men? (2) Are there any differences in the likelihood of having children between individuals employed in trades characterized by high levels of jobs strain vs low levels of job strain? Are there any differences between men and women? The results indicate that women working in high-strain jobs have a lower likelihood of having the first child compared with women working in low-strain jobs, even when several important factors are controlled for. No significant associations between job strain and the timing of the second and third child are found for women. For men, no significant associations between job strain and the births of children are found, at least not when relevant controls are made. Analyses of childbearing and trade indicate that women working in commerce are more likely to have their first child compared with women working in manufacturing. For men, the results indicated that those working in public service are more likely to enter fatherhood compared with men working in manufacturing.childbearing; psycho-social work life conditions; fertility - recession

Housing and first births in Sweden, 1972-2005

The aim of this study is to explore to what extent housing is a constraint for first births in Sweden 1972-2005. Three characteristics of housing are studied: housing type, tenure, and size of dwelling. The occurrence of childbearing is measured as the event of the birth itself and the time 16 months prior to the birth, i.e. initiation of conception. The main finding is that the size of the dwelling seems to be the housing factor with the strongest association with first-birth intensities. The effect of housing on childbearing seems to be stronger if measured to capture time of any first birth than if measured so as to coincide with the situation 16 months prior to the birth. The more strong effects on first-birth risks than on initiation of conceptions suggest that there is also an effect of childbearing plans on housing and residential moves. A stronger association between being established on the housing market and the propensity to have a first child is found for the 1974 cohort compared with the older cohorts. One can naturally speculate about the degree to which young adults opportunities to establish themselves on the housing market were influenced by the rapid and significant policy changes during the early 1990s.First births; Housing; Housing policy; Cohorts

For whose sake do couples relocate? Gender, career opportunities and couples’ internal migration in Sweden

The aim with this study is to examine how career possibilities in the man’s and the woman’s occupations – in the country as a whole, as well as in the region where the couple resides – affect heterosexual couples’ regional mobility. The context is Sweden –a country with a strong dual earner norm combined with a very sex segregated labor market. In the analyses we perform logistic regressions on Swedish register data, 1998–2007. We study how four dimensions of career possibilities affect couples’ geographical mobility and are interested in if their effect varies by gender. The dimensions are geographical wage differences, current career, occupational level and wage compression in occupations. In summary, our findings indicate that male and female career opportunities affect the couple in different ways when one moves beyond focusing on the level of their occupations. In particular the effect from wage compression in occupations seems to be dependent on gender, with a clear effect for men and no effect for women. Even when including measures of career opportunities within professions, there exist some non-egalitarian patterns in whose career couples adjust to. It hence seems as if couples adapt somewhat more to the man's career possibilities than the woman’s, even when we adjust for the underlying gender differences in career possi-bilities.Regional mobility; internal migration; sex segregation; career; gender

Wideband Waveform Design for Robust Target Detection

Future radar systems are expected to use waveforms of a high bandwidth, where the main advantage is an improved range resolution. In this paper, a technique to design robust wideband waveforms for a Multiple-Input-Single-Output system is developed. The context is optimal detection of a single object with partially unknown parameters. The waveforms are robust in the sense that, for a single transmission, detection capability is maintained over an interval of time-delay and time-scaling (Doppler) parameters. A solution framework is derived, approximated, and formulated as an optimization by means of basis expansion. In terms of probabilities of detection and false alarm, numerical evaluation shows the efficiency of the proposed method when compared with a Linear Frequency Modulated signal and a Gaussian pulse.Comment: This paper is submitted for peer review to IEEE letters on signal processin

Finite-Blocklength Bounds on the Maximum Coding Rate of Rician Fading Channels with Applications to Pilot-Assisted Transmission

We present nonasymptotic bounds on the maximum coding rate achievable over a Rician block-fading channel for a fixed packet size and a fixed packet error probability. Our bounds, which apply to the scenario where no a priori channel state information is available at the receiver, allow one to quantify the tradeoff between the rate gains resulting from the exploitation of time-frequency diversity and the rate loss resulting from fast channel variations and pilot-symbol overhead

On Channel Estimation for 802.11p in Highly Time-Varying Vehicular Channels

Vehicular wireless channels are highly time-varying and the pilot pattern in the 802.11p orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing frame has been shown to be ill suited for long data packets. The high frame error rate in off-the-shelf chipsets with noniterative receiver configurations is mostly due to the use of outdated channel estimates for equalization. This paper deals with improving the channel estimation in 802.11p systems using a cross layered approach, where known data bits are inserted in the higher layers and a modified receiver makes use of these bits as training data for improved channel estimation. We also describe a noniterative receiver configuration for utilizing the additional training bits and show through simulations that frame error rates close to the case with perfect channel knowledge can be achieved.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, conferenc

Free Quantum Fields on the Poincare' Group

A class of free quantum fields defined on the Poincare' group, is described by means of their two-point vacuum expectation values. They are not equivalent to fields defined on the Minkowski spacetime and they are "elementary" in the sense that they describe particles that transform according to irreducible unitary representations of the symmetry group, given by the product of the Poincare' group and of the group SL(2, C) considered as an internal symmetry group. Some of these fields describe particles with positive mass and arbitrary spin and particles with zero mass and arbitrary helicity or with an infinite helicity spectrum. In each case the allowed SL(2, C) internal quantum numbers are specified. The properties of local commutativity and the limit in which one recovers the usual field theories in Minkowski spacetime are discussed. By means of a superposition of elementary fields, one obtains an example of a field that present a broken symmetry with respect to the group Sp(4, R), that survives in the short-distance limit. Finally, the interaction with an accelerated external source is studied and and it is shown that, in some theories, the average number of particles emitted per unit of proper time diverges when the acceleration exceeds a finite critical value.Comment: 49 pages, plain tex with vanilla.st