Intergenerational transmission of demographic behaviour

The sequence of demographic events is a very indicative parameter of demographic changes. It demonstrates how diversely different generations construct their demographic life course, what they prefer to do first and when. The first demographic events are more interesting than events of other orders because all the people usually have at least one of them. It allows comparing different age groups of the population. Moreover, the first demographic events accompany a coming-of-age thus we can see when and how representatives of different generations were becoming adult.
This paper investigates the difference between soviet and post-soviet Russians in family formation and fertility spheres. There were constructed life courses for each generation. Thereupon we analyzed them by Event History Analysis and compared the sequences and the timing of the first reproductive and matrimonial events.
We discovered the striking change of the actual behavior in demographic sphere. The Russian youth are making families and bearing children in absolutely new way than their parents and grandparents were. There is no more hurry to live, obligations to have children if you married, and to marry if you bore a child. There is a new generation with new values and new behavior.

During last decade the demographic behavior of Russian population has drastically changed, noticeable changes occurred in timing of marriage and fertility, in preferences of young generations in their living arrangements. The paper gives a view of current transformation in nuptiality and fertility trends and its factors. We reveal new attitudes towards sexual relationships, changes in a family planning model. Young age at marriage was a specific feature of nuptiality pattern in Russia in the early 90s, fertility in the age group 15-19 was comparable with indicator for the 30-34 age group and exceeded that of the 35-39 age groups. By the threshold of the new century, the marriage rate at young ages declined considerably. Approximately 40% of births in the youngest age groups occur out of wedlock. The latter indicates the social significance of this phenomenon and arouses series of problems to be solved by means of social policy. The matrimonial and reproductive behavior of a new generation currently taking place in Russia is a concern of demographers, sociologists, politicians and government institutions. A special attention in the paper is given to the current measures of social policy in the analyzed sphere.

Research and programs have traditionally sought to understand and influence maternal health by focusing on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of recently-pregnant women. Yet, women are often not the decision-makers. In this innovative study, we analyze data collected from women, their husbands, and their mothers-in-law to explore the relative influence of each household member on maternal health practices in rural Mali. The analysis modeled indices of eight cultural domains, including traditionality, gender roles, and power. Key outcomes are antenatal care frequency, antenatal care timing, place of delivery, and receipt of postnatal care. Husbands’ preferences and opinions were not significantly associated with any of the outcomes. In contrast, the preferences and opinions of mothers-in-law had strong effects on the maternal health behaviors of their daughters-in-law. These results indicate that interventions focusing only on women are insufficient to advance women’s reproductive health in patriarchal societies such as Mali.

Early marriage or marriage before the age of 18 is often believed to have negative consequences, leading to lower educational attainment, early childbearing, and adverse health outcomes. Furthermore, early marriage has been regarded by international organizations as a violation of human rights. In Bangladesh, age at marriage has remained low despite the rise in female education. This paper explores the influences that lead to early marriage, including intergenerational effects, and consequences of early marriage for women in Matlab, Bangladesh. While other studies have used cross-sectional data or qualitative data to explore this issue, this study will capitalize upon a unique dataset that links longitudinal data available through two panels of the Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey (MHSS), and the prospectively gathered demographic surveillance data from the Matlab Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS). The results of this study will provide new insights into the practice of early marriage for girls in Bangladesh. The findings may have policy implications to raise the age of marriage for girls.

Using a recently created multigenerational register, this study examines the fertility integration of second generation immigrants in Sweden in light of the fertility history of their parents, their co-ethnics, and the native population. We study the extent that children of immigrants have assimilated to host-country norms in terms of entrance into motherhood, with a focus on the role of labor market status in the process of becoming mothers for groups from varying national backgrounds. Using register data comprising the entire Swedish population, we examine the process of becoming parents for second-generation immigrants while controlling for the reproductive and labor-market history of the parental generation.

This paper investigates to what extent parental endogamy can influence the endogamy of a child and how parental race affects the race of a child’s spouse, using data from the Brazilian Social Survey (PESB) for the year 2002. The analysis also considers the type of parental union (exogamy/endogamy) in order to capture possible differences that effect the race characteristics of a child’s spouse as a result of the type of union between the parents. The characteristics of a parental union may influence the choice of a child’s partner through different mechanisms, such as, i) socialization; ii) the individual's marriage market, and iii) direct parental influence regarding partner choice. The results show that, on average, children of racially endogamous couples are about 78.8% more likely to be in an endogamy union themselves than in a racially exogamous marriage. Parental education is also significant. The results by type of parental union show that parental race matters only for exogamous couples, and an individual's own race is more relevant among children of endogamous parents. The results for the analysis of parental race and the race of a child’s spouse show that having nonwhite parents decreases the probability of a child marrying a white spouse. For this specific case, parental education is not statistically significant.

Sibling studies have been the method of choice to study the effect of family background - everything siblings share - on socioeconomic and demographic outcomes. Recent research on family formation emphasized that fertility and partnership transitions are embedded in a holistic process of family formation that unfolds over time. The main analytical contribution of this study is to combine the sibling approach with sequence analysis to disentangle the mechanisms that link family background to holistic family formation trajectories. We use Finnish register data from 1987 until 2007 to construct family formation sequences for sibling and non-sibling dyads from age 18 to 30 (N=9581 dyads). The empirical analysis employs sequence analysis, sibling correlations, and regression analysis. Preliminary findings show that siblings’ family formation is indeed more similar than family formation of non-sibling dyads. The intersection of education and gender composition of the sibling dyad appear as important explanatory factors for the similarity of siblings’ family formation.

According to theory of second demographic transition change in norms and attitudes towards family formation should lead to increase in proportion of extramarital births and simultaneous decrease in proportion of marital births. However in countries like Poland significant fraction of marital births are those conceived outside of pre-maritally and delivered within marriage (26% bridal pregnancies in 2011). This pattern results from existence of normative tension related to legitimization of out-of-wedlock births. Our main research hypothesis states that this results mostly from pressure from older generation to obey the norm and is sanctioned by degree of economic support given to the youth. Thus, we expect higher incidence of bridal pregnancies among families with higher economic and social status.
In order to test above hypotheses we use data from GGS conducted in Poland. Additionally the results for Poland are confronted with results coming from other countries with high (Italy, Spain) and low (Netherlands) incidence of bridal pregnancies. Analyses are aimed at measurement of intergenerational pressure via social proximity of generations, economic status of older generation and economic status of young couple. For the purpose of modeling we use multinomial logit model for our outcome variable (type of family formation).

Bihar, one of the most populous states of India is experiencing high fertility since decades. Along with exploring the socio-economic influence on fertility, it is important to understand the inter-familial influence on fertility behaviour. The need is even more important, when the state has prevalent norm of joint-family system in which mother-in-law has a strong control on reproductive behaviour of her daughter-in-law. Using the 2-generation data of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, this study examined the changes in reproductive behaviour across the generation and further measured the influence of older generation on the reproductive behaviour of younger generation. Result shows a positive association between age at menarche of mothers-in-law and daughter-in-law. Those mothers-in-law who have ever used any method of family planning were likely to influence the family planning use of her daughter-in-law. Contrary to that, the mothers-in-law who never used any contraceptives were found to be restricting the use of family planning to their daughters-in-law. The mothers-in-law significantly influenced to have an additional child to her daughters-in-law and the influence is stronger if previous children were girls. The result shows that economic benefits of having children are the most reported reasons to have additional child.

Violence within marriage is not uncommon in India. Mainly husband perpetrates physical and sexual violence on wife. However, not much is known about the predictors of such violence from married men and women’s perspective separately. Youth in India study, a sub nationally representative survey, help us to explore this dimension minutely. About one fourth of married men and women perpetrated physical violence and experienced the same respectively, while one in three young women reported coercive sex perpetrated by husband. The result reveals that married men with higher age at marriage residing in non nuclear family and urban parts, with better economic condition are less likely to carry out physical violence. Consumption of drug and alcohol, extra marital relation and witnessing own violence at childhood; enhance the chance of physical violence in marital life. Interestingly men who have witnessed parental violence in childhood are less likely to commit both form of violence. North- South divides are also distinct; experience of physical violence is more in the south while for sexual violence it is other way round. Love marriage perpetrates more violence while non payment of dowry enhances the chances of less violence.