Early traces of the Second Demographic Transition in Bulgaria: a joint analysis of marital and non-marital union formation

In this paper, we study entry into the first conjugal union among young women in Bulgaria in 1980 through 2004 based on data from the national Gender and Generations Survey conducted in 2004. We use an extension of piecewise-constant hazard regression to analyze jointly the transition into a cohabitational union and directly into marriage. This extension will allow us to compare the relative risks of covariates across the two competing transitions, a comparison which infeasible otherwise. In this manner we find, among many other things, that women in the Roma sub-population have more than twice as high a tendency to start a cohabitation as to start a marriage at each age, ceteris paribus, while for ethnic Bulgarian women the relationship is more like 1.5. We also find that a pregnancy leads to a dramatic increase in the rate of both kinds of union formation; the increase is by a factor of over 20 for marriage formation and “only” a factor of around 10 for entry into cohabitation, again ceteris paribus. The standardized marriage intensity for non-pregnant women without children has fallen strongly by a factor of more than six over the period of investigation; the standardized rate of cohabitation has been much more stable and has only fallen by some forty percent, mostly toward the end of the period. These features have not appeared in previous analyses.Bulgaria

The structure of recent first-union formation in Romania

By European standards, consensual first unions have been rare in Romania, and they remain so even though their incidence has increased by a factor of almost five since the early 1960s. Rates of conversion of consensual unions into marriages have been cut in half over the same four decades or so, and marriage rates have declined by a similar factor since the fall of state socialism, which is more dramatic because this period is so much shorter. There have been strong ethnic differentials in union-entry rates in the country.Romania

The contextual database of the generations and gender program in Bulgaria: conceptual framework and an overview of the Bulgarian context concerning the central database topics

This paper outlines the concept and content of the Contextual Database of the international Generations and Gender Program and gives an overview of the context of demographic behavior in Bulgaria. The Contextual Database provides an instrument that together with the Generations and Gender Survey allows studying how differences in context shape demographic processes. The database offers the opportunity to analyze in a comparative way the interaction between the micro and macro dimension. Bulgaria is among the first countries fielding the Generations and Gender Survey and that is engaged in contextual data collection within this comparative framework. While both micro- and contextual data for Bulgaria will become available in the course of the year 2005, we present in this paper a text contribution that provides an overview of the Bulgarian context and introduces the list of variables that make up the database.Bulgaria, data collection

Union formation in times of social and economic change: Evidence from the Bulgarian and Russian GGS

This dissertation analyzes how the socio-economic transformations in Bulgaria and Russia at the end of the 20th century influence the patterns of first union formation. It is an elaboration on the identification of marriage and family in the era of Socialism and on the emergence of non-marital cohabitation and its development between 1970 and 2004. In addition, the study investigates how the combination of family policy measures, economic conditions, and cultural norms affect the individual family formation behavior in the two countries

Levels of recent union formation

We offer a comparison between the age profiles of risks of formation of marital and non-marital unions in Russia, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Italy. We show that there is considerable variability across these populations in the level and age pattern of union-entry risks, ranging (i) from the high and early risks in Russia to the slow and late entries in Italy, and (ii) from an emphasis on marriage in Russia, Poland, Italy, and particularly Romania, to the dominant role of cohabitation reported for Bulgaria. Some of this mostly re-iterates known features (like the patterns for Italy), but they are displayed with unusual clarity in the comparative framework, which also highlights unusual patterns like those for Bulgaria. We cannot see much commonality in union-entry risks among ex-communist countries.Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, marital status, non-marital, Poland, Russia, union formation

Traces of the Second Demographic Transition in Four Selected Countries in Central and Eastern Europe: Union Formation as a Demographic Manifestation

Using data from the first round of the national Gender and Generations Surveys of Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and from a similar survey of Hungary, which were all collected in recent years, we study rates of entry into marital and non-marital unions. We have used elements from the narrative of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) as a vehicle to give our analysis of the data from the four countries some coherence, and find what can be traces of the SDT in these countries. The details vary by country; in particular, latter-day developments in union formation patterns did not start at the same time in all the countries, but in our assessment it began everywhere before communism fell, that is, before the societal transition to a market economy got underway in 1990

Fertility and family policies in Central and Eastern Europe after 1990

This paper examines fertility and family policies in 15 Central and East European (CEE) countries to establish firstly, likely directions of cohort fertility trends for the coming decade; and secondly, to provide an overview and analysis of family policies in CEE countries, and to assess their impact on cohort fertility trends. Demographic analysis suggests that the cohort fertility decline of the 1960s cohorts is likely to continue at least among the 1970s birth cohorts; stagnation cannot be ruled out. Births that were postponed by women born in the 1970s were not being replaced in sufficient numbers for cohort fertility to increase in the foreseeable future, and shares of low parity women (childless and one child) were larger than shares of high parity women among the late 1960s cohorts than in older cohorts. Also, childbearing postponement which started in the 1990s is reflected in dramatic changes of childbearing age patterns. As period fertility rates have been increasing in the late 2000s throughout the region an impression of a fertility recovery has been created, however the findings of this project indicate that no such widespread childbearing recovery is underway. For the first time ever an overview and analysis of CEE family policies is conceptualized in this paper. It demonstrates that fertility trends and family policies are a matter of serious concern throughout the region. The following family policy types have been identified: comprehensive family policy model; pro-natalist policies model; temporary male bread-winner model; and conventional family policies model. The majority of family policies in CEE countries suffer from a variety of shortcomings that impede them from generating enhanced family welfare and from providing conditions for cohort fertility to increase. The likely further decline of cohort fertility, or its stagnation, may entail long-term demographic as well as other societal consequences, such as continuous declines in total population numbers, changes in age structures, as well as implications for health and social security costs.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017

A double burden of malnutrition occurs when individuals, household members or communities experience both undernutrition and overweight. Here, we show geospatial estimates of overweight and wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 2000 to 2017 and aggregate these to policy-relevant administrative units. Wasting decreased overall across LMICs between 2000 and 2017, from 8.4% (62.3 (55.1–70.8) million) to 6.4% (58.3 (47.6–70.7) million), but is predicted to remain above the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025. Prevalence of overweight increased from 5.2% (30 (22.8–38.5) million) in 2000 to 6.0% (55.5 (44.8–67.9) million) children aged under 5 years in 2017. Areas most affected by double burden of malnutrition were located in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Our estimates provide a new perspective to researchers, policy makers and public health agencies in their efforts to address this global childhood syndemic

Consumption of animal products in Bulgaria: The case for change

Animal. Products. in. Bulgaria: The. Case. for. Change. Septemvrina Kostova University for National and World Economy, Bulgaria Borislav Atanasov University for National and World Economy, Bulgaria Dora Marinova Curtin University, Australia ABSTRACT This chapter analyses the trends in production and consumption of animal-based food products, including meat, dairy, eggs and fish, in Bulgaria between 2010 and 2015. Against decreasing population, the production of livestock,&nbsp;..

Research Article Levels of recent union formation: Six European countries compared

Demographic Research a free, expedited, online journal of peer-reviewed research and commentary in the population sciences published by th