1985-1987 - Population Studies Center - University of Michigan

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China: Fertility and Nuptiality Trends in the People'sRepublic of China (PRC).Ronald Freedman (in collaboration with WilliamLavely of the University of Washington and ZhaoZhenu and Li Bohua of the Chinese Information Centerof the PRC) is studying fertility trends and variationsin China using the One-Per-Thousand Fertility Surveydone in the PRC in 1982. This project has alreadyresulted in an article on "Local Area Variations inReproductive Behavior in China" to be published inPopulation Studies in the spring of 1988. The role ofeducation in nuptiality and fertility change in the provincesof Sichuan and Liaoning between 1968-70 and1979-82, the period of precipitous fertility decline, isthe subject of a second article now in draft.Work is proceeding on an analysis of the determinantsof historical fertility trends in major regions ofChina, taking into account especially the topography,soil conditions, and water-availability which has determinedto a substantial degree the agricultural productivityof local areas within the major regions. Thiswork is being done with the support of the East-WestPopulation Institute, which has an agreement with theState Family Planning Commission of the PRC for analysisof the One-Per-Thousand Survey.MARRIAGE AND FAMILY STRUCTUREUnited States: Inter generationalPanel Study of Parentsand Children.Deborah Freedman and Arland Thornton continue tostudy the family and household decisions of youngadults as they make the transition to adulthood, usinglongitudinal data from the 23-year-old Detroit AreaStudy (DAS). In 1980 and 1985, the children born in1962 to a sample of women in the Detroit area wereinterviewed, and Freedman and Thornton have useddata from the panel study to examine the process ofcohabitation and marriage, particularly the causes andconsequences of entrance into cohabitation withoutmarriage. They found a clear causal impact of valuesand religious commitment on experience with cohabitationand that cohabitation, in turn, influences subsequentattitudes and values.Extending earlier work on changing attitudes towardfamily and demographic issues, they are also analyzingdata from the 1985 DAS interviews and two other datasets. They find that after a period of rapid change infamilial attitudes in the 1960s and 1970s, attitudestoward marriage, divorce, childlessness, and premaritalsex have remained quite constant during the early1980s. Attitudes toward the roles of women, however,John Knodel, Deborah and Ronald Freedman, and Napaporn Chayovan,a formerCenterstudent, reunite in Thailand.have continued their long-term egalitarian movement.With data about visiting and support behavioracross three generations, they are currently describingthe kinds and frequencies of intergenerational interchanges.One analysis will investigate whether motherswho received help from their parents when theirchildren were born are more likely than others to behelpful to their aging parents now.Freedman and Thornton collected event history datausing a life history calendar, and have summarizedtheir approach and its success in an article forthcomingin Sociological Methodology. Comparison of reportsfrom the 1985 and 1980 interviews provided someevaluation of the quality of the retrospective data.They found that reports of 1980 marriage, childbearing,and educational attendance obtained in 1985 were veryclose to those reported in 1980; retrospective reports oflabor force status, although not quite as reliable, werealso good.SOCIAL-DEMOGRAPHIC INTERACTIONSSoviet Union: The Soviet Interview Project.Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver are among12 investigators, including economists, political scientists,sociologists, and Russian language and literatureexperts from several universities and institutions, whoarc studying political and social issues in the SovietUnion. Their research is based on interviews withemigrants from the Soviet Union to the United States.In 1983, almost 3,000 emigrants were interviewed; in1986, an additional 600 more recent emigrants wereinterviewed. The Soviet Interview Project (SIP) issponsored by the National Council for Soviet and EasttAResearch 5
European Research and directed by James Millar of theUniversity of Illinois. Professors Anderson and Silver'swork has focused on issues of data quality and questionsabout family and household demography.Professor Anderson has been investigating lifecourse dynamics in the Soviet Interview Project data.She has found that although the level of female laborforce participation in this group was very high, veryfew women had uninterrupted careers. Also, earlychildbearing affected the timing of labor force entry,but was not related to reduced labor force participationover the life cycle. Data on the status of women andchild care are being used to study contingent householdand family decision-making.Professor Silver has been investigating politicalattitudes and beliefs. He has found that even thoughall the respondents left the Soviet Union, they express ahigh degree of support for many Soviet institutions,including public medical care and state control ofheavy industry. In addition, although those who hadhigher incomes in the Soviet Union were more supportiveof the regime, higher educational levels wereassociated with more skepticism and less support ofregime norms.United States: Ecological Determinants of IndividualBehavior.David Goldberg has been looking at the separatecontribution of individual characteristics and ofpopulation potentials on a number of variables in theDetroit metropolitan area in 1980 and 1981. Using aweighted sample of 1,205 individuals, ProfessorGoldberg found that for Republican Party preferencefor individuals, a measure of the population potentialof Republican Party preference had a significant effecteven after important characteristics of the individualwere taken into account. The more people who livedclose-to the respondent favored the Republican Party,the more iikely the respondent was to favor the RepublicanParty, even after the respondent's race, age, sex,and a variety of socioeconomic characteristics weretaken into account. Somewhat weaker effects ofpopulation potential measures were found for howfrequently people travelled to downtown Detroit fornon-business reasons and whether people planned tomove within the next 2-3 years, Allen Beck and BaronMoots collaborated on the project.Thailand: Socioeconomic Consequences of Fertility Declinefor the Thai Family.John Knodel is using both quantitative and qualitativemethodologies to assess the perceived and actualconsequences of the sharp reduction in fertility that hasoccurred over the last two decades in Thailand for thesocioeconomic well-being of the Thai family. Theresearch plan includes a survey, in depth interviewswith key informants, and focus group discussions. Theinvestigators are particularly interested in the impactthat reduced family size has had on the ability toeducate children, accumulation of material wealth, andwomen's labor force participation. The general strategyof the project is to compare couples with large andsmall family sizes in two districts in Thailand withdifferent social, economic and demographic settings.The project is concerned with assessing the extent towhich the rationale for the National Family PlanningProgram in Thailand has actually been confirmed byexperience, now that the program has had success inreducing fertility. This work has been supported byFamily Health International and the RockefellerFoundation.ECONOMIC-DEMOGRAPHIC INTERACTIONSCross-National:of Income.Demographic Effects on the DistributionThe effects of population growth and other demographicchanges on the distribution of income is thefocus of a continuing project by David Lam. This workhas used techniques from stable population theory toanalyze the effects of changing age structure anddifferential fertility across income classes on incomeinequality. A portion of this research was supportedby the National Academy of Sciences. An overview ofthe effects of population growth on inequality appearedin the Academy's recent report on populationgrowth and economic development. In a phase of theitWffiII••11IIPI!RDavid A. Lam and Jeffrey Miron6 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 10 and 11: project conducted jointly with Debo
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
Page 23 and 24: 1985-86, and Maxine Weinstein in 19
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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