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65 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POPULATION - REVUE EUROPEENNE DE DEMOGRAPHIE
March 1999, Vol. 15, N° 1
Childbearing trends in Sweden 1961-1997.
The purpose of this paper is to update a system of annual indices of birth rates and to display trends in childbearing for Swedish women over the years since 1961. Our indices are produced by applying indirect standardization to register data. They enable us to decompose the overall fertility trends, as measured by the period TFR, into its birth-order specific components. Swedish fertility has shown strong fluctuations during our study period and these fluctuations have been particularly dramatic during recent years. A postponement of the age at first birth and a sudden shift to shorter birth intervals are important components in the fertility trends. A peak in the level of childbearing at the beginning of the present decade has now been followed by a sharp drop in the propensity to give birth. This change in behaviour pertains to women of all parities.
English - pp. 1-24.
G. Andersson, Demography Unit, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
gua@hem2.passagen.se.
(SWEDEN, FERTILITY TRENDS, INDEX NUMBERS, METHODOLOGY, BIRTH ORDER.)
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Fertility behaviour under income uncertainty.
This paper develops a two-period stochastic model of fertility behaviour to provide a possible explanation for the recent sharp decline in birth rates in the former Soviet Republics and Eastern European countries. Due to the existence of irreversibilities associated with the childbearing decision and the option of postponing childbearing for a later time, it may be optimal for individuals to postpone childbearing during times of increased income uncertainty.
English - pp. 25-43.
P. Ranjan, Department of Economics, 3151 Social Science Plaza, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, U.S.A.
pranjan @ uci. edu
(COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDANT STATES, EASTERN EUROPE, REPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOUR, FERTILITY DECLINE, HOUSEHOLD INCOME.)
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Who, what, where, and when? Specifying the impact of educational attainment and labour force participation on family formation.
This article studies the impact of educational attainment and labour force participation on the timing of entering a union, marriage, and parenthood, using data from Flemish and Dutch young adults born between 1961 and 1965. This impact is hypothesized to be contingent on sex, the event under consideration, the societal context in which family formation occurs, and the age of young adults. As expected, educational attainment has a stronger negative effect on women's entry into parenthood than on their entry into a union, a stronger negative effect on women's entry into marriage and parenthood in the Netherlands than in Flanders, and a stronger effect during the early stages of young adulthood than later on. Men's educational attainment did not show the expected positive effect on family formation. Enrollment in full-time education delays family formation, but more so in Flanders than in the Netherlands. Unemployment delays family formation among men, but only in Flanders.
English - pp. 45-75.
A. C. Liefbroer, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, P. O. Box 11650, 2502 AR The Hague, Netherlands.
liefbroer@nidi.nl; cbgs@wvc.vlaanderen.be.
(BELGIUM, NETHERLANDS, FAMILY FORMATION, LEVELS OF EDUCATION, LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION.)
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Mortality differences related to socio-economic status and the progressivity of old-age pensions and health insurance: The Netherlands.
Research on the progressivity of the social security system generally does not take into account the existence of differences in mortality rates between socioeconomic groups. For the Netherlands, these differences result in a difference in life expectancy between persons with a lower education and persons with a higher education of about 4.5 years. On a lifetime basis this results in a net loss of about Dfl. 90,000 for the group with a lower education in comparison with the group with a higher education. This means that the retum from various social security schemes no longer appears to be the highest for persons with a lower education. In particular, the group with a middle level education now gains from the system. Due to these differences in life expectancy, the redistributive impact of the social security system, as measured by the Theil coefficient, is decreased by about 6%.
English - pp. 77-97.
J. H. M. Nelissen, Tilburg University, P. O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, Netherlands.
j.h.m.nelissen@kub.nl.
(NETHERLANDS, DIFFERENTIAL MORTALITY, SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS, LEVELS OF EDUCATION, RETIREMENT PENSIONS, SOCIAL SECURITY.)
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65 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POPULATION - REVUE EUROPEENNE DE DEMOGRAPHIE
June 1999, Vol. 15, N° 2
The vulnerable child. Economic insecurity and child mortality in pre-industrial Sweden: A case study of Västanfors, 1757-1850.
By using macroeconomic time series as time-varying community variables in a life event analysis framework for micro data on individuals, we have found that mortality among children over the age of one year in pre-industrial Sweden was directly dependent upon economic fluctuations, a fact which has not been demonstrated before. The impact is stronger among the lower classes than the well-to-do. It is particularly strong in years following an extremely poor harvest. Another new finding is that smallpox mortality among children is determined by economic fluctuations. However, infant mortality seems to follow its own rhythms independently of changes in economic conditions.
English - pp. 117-151.T. Bengtsson, Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden.
(SWEDEN, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY, CHILD MORTALITY, MORTALITY DETERMINANTS, ECONOMIC CONDITIONS, DIFFERENTIAL MORTALITY.)
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00.65.6 - TABEAU, Ewa; EKAMPER, Peter; HUISMAN, Corina; BOSCH, Alinda.
Improving overall mortality forecasts by analysing cause-of-death, period and cohort effects in trends.
The major goal of this study is to propose improvements in the methods for forecasting overall mortality. In order to reach this goal, three types of trend-oriented forecasts have been studied. Each type of forecast is conditional on developments in one of the three factors, period, cohort and cause of death, which are known to represent symptomatic measures of certain causal mechanisms. Mortality projections have been made for four developed European countries: France, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway. The projections are based on observed mortality data over the years 1950-1994 and cohorts born in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The results of the analyses do not show a best solution, though the cause-of-death approach looks the most promising. However, the period and cohort approaches certainly have additional value in the forecasting process. The cause-of-death approach should ideally be used jointly with the overall mortality period (or overall mortality cohort) approach. However, the cause-of-death approach is not optimal for forecasting the mortality of the oldest-old. Another modelling method, for instance parameterization of overall mortality, should be considered for that purpose. The cohort approach can be used to improve forecasting of period mortality.
English - pp. 153-183.E.Tabeau, P. Ekamper, C. Huisman and A. Bosch, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), Lange Houtstraat 19, 2511 CV The Hague, Netherlands.
tabeau@nidi.nl.
(METHODOLOGY, FORECASTS, MORTALITY, CAUSES OF DEATH, PERIOD ANALYSIS, COHORT ANALYSIS.)
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00.65.7 - DUNCAN, S. R.; SCOTT, Susan; DUNCAN, C. J.
A demographic model of measles epidemics.
Liverpool, U.K., 1863-1900, has been used as a model to explore the interaction between measles epidemics and the population dynamics in an overcrowded community with inadequate nutrition using a non-linear model which allows the estimation of certain underlying demographic parameters. The results are consistent with a system that is driven by an oscillation in the transmission parameter that is compounded of an oscillation in autumn temperatures (at the resonant frequency of the system, 2.4 years) and, secondarily, by an oscillation in wheat prices (wavelength = 5.3 years, twice that of the epidemics).
English - pp. 185-198.S. R. Duncan, Department of Engineering Science, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PJ, U.K.
sscott@liverpool.ac.uk.
(UNITED KINGDOM, HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY, METHODOLOGY, DEMOGRAPHIC MODELS, EPIDEMICS, MEASLES.)
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