The demography of ethnicity, culture and language

The paper studies the fertility transition and explains under which conditions its forerunners started to reduce their fertility. It focuses on Jews in Bohemia, who had low fertility rates very early on, not only in comparison with the total country population but also in comparison to Jews elsewhere in Europe. A unique set of aggregate data on population change from the late 18th century until the Shoah allows tracking the process of Jewish fertility transition in its entirety, comparing it with gentiles and interpreting it in its cultural and socio-historical context. The paper shows that Jewish fertility was limited within marriage already in the 18th century. A further sharp decrease came after 1848, when Jews acquired equal civil rights. The necessary conditions for fertility decline thus came together at this time: low mortality, upward mobility aspirations, high human capital, low religiosity, and a favorable legal and socio-economic environment.

The burgeoning influx of international residents into Korea has been diversifying the demographic structure as well as increasing the size of the foreign population. This swell in ethnic heterogeneity is a novelty to Korean society which has had homogeneous ethnic-cultural features. The main objective of this paper is to examine the effects of foreign population size on Korean attitudes towards foreigners and heterogeneity of its effect according to the foreigner’s ethnic group. This study hypothesizes that perceptions of threat posed by a larger size of foreign population in a county are likely to increase Korean negative attitudes towards foreigners. Micro-data from the 2010 Korean General Survey and municipal data of foreign residents and Korean citizens in 2009 are analyzed. The effects of the foreign population’s perceptible size on Korean attitudes towards foreigners vary depending on the foreigner’s ethnic group. The primary result in this study shows that greater size of foreign population in a county tends to have more negative effects on Korean acceptance towards Japanese, Korean Chinese, Han Chinese, and Southeast Asians in comparison to the result that foreign population size has a statistically insignificant effect on Korean attitudes towards North Korean defectors, North Americans, and Europeans.

Demographic transformations that occurred in developed countries during the past decades, including the delay in marriage and age at first birth and the significant decline in fertility rates, are usually explained by increases in women’s education and labour force participation as well as the decline in traditional forms of religious practice and the shift of values towards greater individualism. The current paper, explores the relationship between religion and women’s transition to first birth in highly secularized Western countries – France and Britain – and the role of education in affecting this relationship. Using data from the French survey of the Generation and Gender Programme and the British Household Panel Survey, the relationships between religious factors and the transition to first birth are examined by employing a model of event history analysis. The findings show a differential effect of education on completed fertility and entry into motherhood according to women’s level of religiosity.

Much has been said the ''exceptionally'' high Palestinian fertility. Even though the fertility transition is well under way it is clear that the classical theory of demographic transition cannot explain the continued strong demand for children in the modern yet conflicting context of Gaza or the differences with the West Bank. Several hypotheses have been brought up to explain the factors surrounding the ever-high Palestinian fertility. This paper thus aims to better understand the mechanisms of fertility change in this region. The factors behind their fertility dynamics are analyzed with a multilevel hierarchical linear model (HLM) to disentangle the individual and group level effects that come into play. We argue that the minority group status, the permanent state of belligerence, and its consequences on a contextual level play a role in explaining the high fertility. The fertility dynamics should resemble to that of the Palestinians living in Israel.

This paper broaches a field of intersection between cultural geography and demography. From the notion of territorialization and deterritorialization via migratory process, this article will discuss about the concept of Topophilia by Yi-Fu Tuan and its derivatives,
applied in Roraimense reality. This unit of the Brazilian federation, which delimits the spatial area of this paper, in recent decades experienced a strong population growth (about 40% of absolute population growth between 1980 and 2000) that finds in the migratory process and in the pioneers sources of economic appropriation of space important transformers agents of landscape. The imbalance of the ethnic composition of the state caused by immigration endangers the indigenous culture which sees the fast
appropriation of space by entrepreneurial activities often performed by immigrants, this being the main conflict to be considered on this paper. The migration previously served to reinforce the military conquests, asserting itself as an effective instrument of territorialization. The study developed on this paper, will serve to draw attention of government for silent spatial dynamics and stupendously fast, truly topocide forces and what puts at risk the indigenous cultures.

Fertility has declined across several Indian states of late (1970s), with varying historical points of onset and pace of decline. Women in Uttar Pradesh still bear four children due to interplay of socioeconomic, demographic and cultural factors. Rarely role of diffusion was examined in precipitating fertility change in the India. To investigate the role of women’s social network towards determining contraceptive method choice in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. The study is based on egocentric social network data from 567 women 18-35 years. The results indicate weak association between discussion on matters of family planning (MoFP) and contraceptive method use. However, adjusting for interaction term, the discussion of MoFP and density of SNP discourage women to use contraceptive methods. This suggests operation of social influence to sustain high fertility in the study area.

West Bengal is unique in the sense that female age at marriage is among the lowest in India when the state has been a forerunner in demographic transition among Indian states. Similarly marriage age has been persistently low in Bangladesh despite heavy investments in female education and employment. This paper contends that regional context is an important determinant of marriage/childbearing patterns. West Bengal has more in common with Bangladesh than with the rest of India given the long history shared by the two wings of pre-Partition British Bengal. Applying survival analysis techniques to Bangladesh 2007 DHS and West Bengal 2005-06 NFHS, the paper examines the life course followed by women. The age affect is a more important determinant for leaving education than any other co-variate examined. The age or cohort effect is highly significant in determining the likelihood of entry into first marriage in Bangladesh, but not in West Bengal. Contrary to a fixed life course trajectory, results reveal that women follow diverse patterns. Whereas, women with little education enter marriage and childbearing early, the trajectory for educated women is not as clear cut. The paper discusses the plausible causes and consequences of the various trajectories of family formation.

Access to education is a fundamental right to attain social change towards equitable development and respects of cultural diversity. In the last three decades, Latin America has made great efforts to achieve the educational goals subscribed. However indigenous peoples present an unfavorable situation in education with great inequalities. The question of indigenous language emerges as one of the main demands of these peoples. It’s urgent to have updated information on these issues, as a key for human rights promotion. Most countries in the region have included questions of self-identification in their censuses. In the 2010 census also included questions on indigenous language. We analyze in the last decade changes of accessibility and permanence of young indigenous people in the educational system and the liveliness or loss of the indigenous language. We include a reference to the ducation right minimum standards, including national legislative developments in: Costa Rica, Ecuador and Venezuela. Aftwerards, educational and language indicators are calculated. The analysis considers territorial, ethnic, gender and generational inequalities and the geographical distribution of formal education/ language maintenance relationship. The study presents relevant and unpublished information. It ends with a discussion and policy proposals.

Buddhism is the dominant religion in a number of Asian countries and the most common religion in some of the countries with the lowest fertility levels in the world. The relationship between Buddhism and childbearing has received comparatively limited scholarly attention so far. Studies of of childbearing in other religions tend to find that religiosity is positively related to fertility.
After considering Buddhist teachings regarding contraception, family formation, and childbearing ideals, we do not find evidence that Buddhism is inherently pronatalist. Our hypothesis is the Buddhist affiliation and commitment level is not associated with higher fertility.
We analyze patterns of childbearing among Buddhists in several Asian countries: India, Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, Mongolia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea. We investigate how Buddhist affiliation (and religiosity when available) related to the number of children ever born, controlling for education, urbanization, union status and age. Our preliminary empirical results suggest that in many countries, Buddhist affiliation is not associated with significantly higher fertility. For instance in Thailand, Buddhism is negatively associated with fertility (among women aged 25-49), also when education and region is controlled for.

International migration from Sub-Saharan Africas (SSA) is increasing in number and stable at around 10% of the total global international migrants during the period from 1990 to 2010. When differentiated by language group, it is revealed that English-speaking SSA migrants are more prone to go outside of SSA and to Anglophone countries such as USA or UK, whereas French-speaking SSA migrants move mostly within SSA and those who go beyond the continent move basically to Francophone countries such as France. The domestic (internal) mobility in SSA does not show language-specific difference on the country level, but the provincial level analysis reveals that English-speaking capital areas are more mobile than French-speaking capital areas. There is indeed a cultural, linguistic push and pull relationship in terms of international migration and also one can assume that the strong pull from Anglophone developed countries had caused the high mobility in the English-speaking capital areas of SSA. This hypothesis suggests that the international migration is induced not only by economic pull but also on cultural bonds, and the global movement interacts with domestic mobility.