1985-1987 - Population Studies Center - University of Michigan

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project conducted jointly with Deborah Levison, aCenter trainee in economic demography, age profiles ofearnings inequality in Brazil and the U. S. are decomposedin order to compare the relative importance ofage, experience, and schooling in explaining inequalityin the two countries.United States: Consumption Aspirations of Young Adults.Widespread consumerism among adolescents leadsthem to unrealistic expectations for high levels ofownership of consumer goods and relatively largefamily sizes, according to Deborah Freedman. She hasused data from Michigan's Detroit Area Study, alongitudinal data set of mothers and their childrenborn in 1961, to study the consumption aspirations anddesired family size of 18 year-olds. She found thatalthough the living standards of the parental familyhad some positive effect on their offspring's materialwants, the major determinant of their aspirations forconsumer goods was their ownership of fairly substantialitems of consumer goods while still in high school.Despite their desire for consumer goods, this group hasrelatively high family size goals (2.9 children) comparedto present fertility rates, and they may adjusttheir fertility goals downward as they get older.United States: The Consequences of Federal TransferPrograms.In a paper presented to the Social Statistics Section ofthe American Statistical Association in August 1986,Reynolds Farley and Lisa J. Neidert looked at howwelfare and government transfer payments are distributedamong American households and their effects onhousehold income. They used a weighted sample fromthe March 1985 Current Population Survey and dividedit into four groups: the dependent poor, theworking poor (those who depended on transfer paymentsfor less than half their income), the near poor(those whose incomes are 1 to 1.5 times the povertycut-off level) and the non-poor. The working poor, ofwhom three-quarters are in the labor force, are notmuch better off than the dependent poor, with householdincomes averaging only $264 more per year thanthose of the dependent poor. The near poor benefitgreatly from transfer payments — almost 55 percent ofhouseholds in this category would be in poverty if itwere not for government transfer payments.United States: The Color Line and the Quality of Life inAmerica.The Russell Sage Foundation recently published TheColor line and the Quality of Life in America, by ReynoldsFarley and sociology professor Walter R. Allen. Usingdata from the censuses of 1790 to 1980, their workconstitutes a major demographic analysis of changesover time in the social and economic conditions ofblacks in the United States. It encompasses suchdimensions as fertility, mortality, migration, familystructure, educational attainment, employment, andearnings, comparing blacks and whites on major socialindicators. The findings of the study are mixed but notequivocal: blacks show decided gains on some measures,such as educational attainment and occupationalachievement, but a persistent lack of progress onothers, such as personal income, participation in thelabor force, and residential integration.United States: The Detroit Child Care Study.From a survey of mothers of preschool-aged childrenin the Detroit area, Karen Oppenheim Mason is investigatinghow the cost, availability, and quality of nonmaternalchild care influences mothers' decisions aboutemployment and about bearing additional children.The project is funded by NICHD. Specific aims includeunderstanding what constitutes "satisfactory child careat reasonable cost" to women in a variety of social andeconomic circumstances, and understanding whetherthe local availability and cost of alternative forms ofchild care influence women's labor force participationor hours worked and their reproductive behavior.In 1985 and 1986, the project collected interview datafrom a probability sample of mothers of preschoolagedchildren living in the greater Detroit metropolitanarea. The survey was conducted by the Survey ResearchCenter of the University of Michigan. Respondentswere asked about fertility and employmenthistories and plans, past and current child care arrangements,perceptions of child care availability andcosts, and several other relevant topics. Unemploymentdata from the area is also being merged with thesurvey interview data.From analyses to date, Mason has found that a sizeableproportion of mothers of preschool-aged children(as many as 40%) report that child care has been or is aconstraint on their employment. The proportion reportingthat child care is a constraint on their fertility islower, although nontrivial. The fewer the economicresources available to women, the more that child careproblems are reported to constrain their employmentor fertility in some way.A series of statistical models relating socioeconomic,demographic and background variables to the perceivedand actual cost/availability of child care and towomen's current and planned employment andfertility will be estimated using standard statisticalResearch 7
techniques, such as path analysis, single-equationordinary least squares regression analysis and logisticresponse models. William M. Mason is serving asstatistical consultant to the project. The mainobject ofthese estimates willbe to test several hypotheses, mostprominently the hypothesis that high child care costslead to reduced fertility and female labor supply.Soviet Union: Demographic Patterns of Soviet Regionsand Ethnic Groups.Barbara A. Anderson and Center affiliate Brian D.Silverare continuing their study of population dynamicsin the USSR since World War II. They considertheSoviet Union anexcellent laboratoryfor the study ofdemographic patterns because there is wide diversityin demographic behavior and in socio-cultural characteristicsof subpopulations which exists under acommon set of administrative rules and operationalprocedures. Their project produced fundamentalestimates of age distributions, life tables, and fertilitymeasuresforthe Soviet population as a whole and forSoviet regions and ethnic groups in ordertoobtainindicators of underlying demographic processes.Anderson and Silver haveassessed the completenessof Soviet census enumeration and birth registration forchildren and adolescents counted in the 1959 and 1970censuses. They found that between 4 and 5 percent ofbirthswere unregistered; pre-school children, adolescentsaged 16-17 and young adults aged 20-24 wereundercnumerated by 3 to 4 percent; while primaryschool-age children and adolescents aged 18-20werealmost completely enumerated. They also addressedthe Soviet policyof enumerating both "present" and"permanent" populations in censuses, finding largedifferences between rural and urban areas, and theynote a gradual shifting of the base of most reportedpopulation characteristics in Soviet censuses to thepermanent population. In articles published in ResearchGuide to the Russian and Soviet Censuses, Andersonreviewsthe concepts of marital status, householdheadship, family membership, fertility, and dependencystatus employed in Soviet censuses and theirchangesover time for both longitudinal and comparativestudies.In their work on Soviet mortality, they have foundthat the level of mortality in the Soviet Union is high bythe standards of developed countries. Definitionalconventions and poordata quality led the actual levelof many mortality indicators to be substantially worsethan the reported levels. Furthermore, improvementsin data quality over time havealso made many reportedmortality indicators worsen over time. However,the trend in (he actual values of many mortalityindicators over timeis not as badasthe trend inreported mortality indicators, even though the actualmortality levels are worse than the reported mortalitylevels.United States: Political Alienation, Cohort Size, and theEasterlin Hypothesis.With Joan R. Kahn, a former Center student now onthe faculty at the University of Maryland, William M.Mason evaluated Richard Easterlin's extension of histheory of cohort crowding to political alienation in theUnited States. Easterlin argued that cohort crowdingexplains temporal variability not only infertility,butalso in divorce, suicide, crime, and political alienationas well. According to this theory, increased competitionfor limited resources and thwarted aspirationsbased on theirparents' experiences causes young adultmembers of large cohorts to feel more politically alien-IWilliam M. Masonatcd than their counterparts in small cohorts. Consequently,young people from baby boom birth cohortswere supposed to feel greater political alienation thanearlier or later cohorts.Mason and Kahn used data fromthe MichiganNational Election Surveys forthe presidential yearsfrom 1952 to 1980 and various measures of cohortsize.They found that political alienation is largely unaffectedby birth cohort membership and that levels ofalienation fluctuate over time for the populace as awhole. A period basis more accurately describesswings in political alienation, and political and socialissues are more closely associated than economic issueswith the originsof the post-World WarII rise inalienation.United States: The Status of Black Americans.In1984, the National Academy of Sciences establishedthe Committee on the Status of Black Americans,8 Population Studies Center
Page 2 and 3: 1985-87Report of thePopulation Stud
Page 4 and 5: DIRECTOR'SSTFrrEITIEnTJuly 1,1987 m
Page 6 and 7: RESEARCHThe Center facilitates a la
Page 8 and 9: China: Fertility and Nuptiality Tre
Page 12 and 13: which has undertaken amajor assessm
Page 14 and 15: STAFF PUBLICATIONSBarbara A. Anders
Page 16 and 17: Ronald Freedman (Cont'd.)Theories o
Page 18: John Knodel (Cont'd.)(with Peerasit
Page 21 and 22: countries, and a number of other na
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Page 25 and 26: Mark Langberg February 1986"Residen
Page 27 and 28: STUDENT PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATI
Page 29 and 30: COURSES (Cont'd.)Sociology 535 - Th
Page 31 and 32: Reynolds Farley (Cont'd.)Member, So
Page 33 and 34: Albert I. Hermalin (Cont'd.)Present
Page 35 and 36: William M. Mason (Cont'd.)Presented
Page 37 and 38: Suzanne Bianchi 1978Sta ristkia n /
Page 39 and 40: Kd Matsushita 1985Research Associat
Page 41 and 42: Twenty-five Year/ al (hePopulation
Page 43 and 44: Entwisle, Yuzuru Takeshita, William
Page 45 and 46: important role in the research prod
Page 47 and 48: On Monday, June 16, a workshop —T
Page 49 and 50: A RENEWALIn the same year that the
Page 51 and 52: Executive Committee of the Populati
Page 53: Photographs in this reportwere prov

1985-1987 - Population Studies Center - University of Michigan

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