Fewer Singles among Highly Educated Women. A Gender Reversal of Hypergamy across Cohorts in France
Milan Bouchet-Valat
Female hypergamy, defined as the propensity of individuals to form unions in which the woman is of lower status than the man, is a widely observed phenomenon. This article analyses first union formation in France using data from the 1999 family history survey (Étude de l’histoire familiale). In France, since the cohorts born in the late 1950s, couples where the woman is more educated than her partner are more frequent than the reverse. This trend is mainly attributable to the lengthening of female education – women are now more educated than men, even after controlling for changes in the educational distribution of the population (relative hypergamy) – and reflects a shift in individual preferences. Last, while the highest educated women in the pre-war birth cohorts were strongly disadvantaged on the marriage market, we observe that female permanent singlehood no longer increases with educational level. Conversely, permanent singlehood among low educated men has risen, reflecting the persistent negative effect of poor labour market outcomes on male union formation. These findings reveal a considerable weakening of the norm of female educational hypergamy, although the potential consequences of this change remain uncertain.
Female Education and Fertility under State Socialism in Central and Eastern Europe
Zuzanna Brzozowska
This article analyses trends in completed fertility of women born between 1916 and 1960 in seven countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe (Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia). Using census data, decomposition and standardization methods are applied to study the effect of growing educational attainment on cohort fertility, including childlessness and high parity births. The results suggest that the decline in cohort fertility was driven by rising educational enrolment on the one hand and
by a reduction in high parity births on the other. These two negative effects were partially counterbalanced by the shrinking proportions of childless women. All in all, the trends in cohort fertility followed similar patterns in the various study countries, but their intensity varied greatly. There does not seem to have existed a specific socialist fertility trend, with one exception: a steady decline in the proportion of childless women (contrasting with an upward tendency in the West among women born after 1940). The results also suggest that in Romania, Poland and Hungary, the strong pronatalist policy measures may have halted the decline in high parity births.
The Dynamics of Language Shift in Canada
Patrick Sabourin, Alain Bélanger
This article proposes a method for estimating language shifts based on fictitious cohorts and survival analysis. With this method, data from a single census can be used to obtain language shift rates in different population groups in Canada (by language first learned in childhood, immigrant status, age at immigration, level of education) and in all relevant regions of the country. The robustness of the method was validated by comparing the results obtained with data from the Canadian censuses of 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006. Language shift rates by age and time since immigration are robust over time, but the rates vary significantly between population groups. They are very low in first-generation allophone immigrants who arrived in Canada as adults, but can reach 90% in the second generation. These rates vary little from one Canadian region to another among allophones, but they vary more in official language minorities, in some cases reaching rates comparable to those observed in the second generation of allophone immigrants. In Quebec, where French and English are
both languages of convergence for allophones, the rise in language shifts towards French is largely due to changes in the ethnolinguistic composition of immigration.
Adoption in France and Italy: A Comparative History of Law and Practice (Nineteenth to twenty-First centuries)
Jean-François Mignot
Adoption law in France and Italy is quite similar, and since the 1990s, these two countries have been among those which adopt the largest numbers of children from abroad. But over a longer timescale, what are the similarities and differences in their adoption practices? This article retraces the history of adoption law and practices in France and Italy since the nineteenth century. While adoption law in the two countries has followed a similar trajectory, the actual numbers of simple adoptions are very different, mainly because far fewer stepfamilies are formed after divorce in Italy than in France. By contrast, the number of full adoptions and the characteristics of the children concerned are similar in both countries. After facing a scarcity of domestic adoptable children, potential adopters have, since 2011, been confronted with a drop in the number of minors available for intercountry adoption. As a consequence, intercountry adoptees in France and Italy tend to be older, and more often have siblings and/or health problems or disabilities than in the past.
Mortality Changes during the Transition from Planned Socialism to State Capitalism: The Case of Shanghai
Jiaying Zhao, Edward Jow-Ching Tu, Guixiang Song, Adrian Sleigh
In contrast to the mortality dynamics of the former socialist economies of Europe during their transition era, few studies have examined mortality changes in China since the start of its socialist economic reforms. This article examines mortality trends of Shanghai permanent residents during the transition from planned socialism to state capitalism. The previously steady improvement in life expectancy slowed down between 1992 and 1996. Mortality among young working-age men (ages 20-44) increased, largely due to rising cardiovascular disease and injuries. Transportation deaths increased but not mortality from suicide or liver disease. These unfavourable mortality patterns are linked to reform-associated institutional changes such as weaker social protection, increased unemployment, psychological stress, unsafe transport and hazardous environments. However, the unfavourable effects were moderate and transient due to gradualist reform strategies and strong institutions combined with rapid economic growth. The lessons learned from the Shanghai experience may
be useful for other socialist countries wishing to shift to a market economy.
