Fertility,social class,gender, and the professional model: statistical explanation and historical significance

In 2012 Barnes and Guinnane published a revised statistical analysis of the critical evaluation of the official 1911 social class model of fertility decline that was presented in chapter 6 of Szreter's Fertility, class and gender in Britain, 1860–1940 (FCG). They argue that the official model of five ranked social classes is, after all, a satisfactory statistical summary of the fertility variance found among the married couples of England and Wales at the famous 1911 fertility census, and so they conclude that, pace Szreter, the official model provides a satisfactory account of the nation's fertility decline as one of social class differentials. It is acknowledged here that Barnes and Guinnane have deployed superior statistical techniques. However, it is pointed out that FCG identified fundamental problems with the design of the 1911 official model. It was a social evolutionary model privileging male professional occupations, not a modelling of recognized social class theory at the time or since. In FCG it was therefore termed ‘the professional model’. The central historiographical claim of FCG is re‐affirmed: that in order to study fruitfully the historical relationship between social class and fertility decline, an alternative approach is needed which explicitly integrates gender relations with social class.     

Social class and the fertility transition: a critical comment on the statistical results reported in Simon Szreter's Fertility,class and gender in Britain, 1860–19401

Simon Szreter's book Fertility, class and gender in Britain, 1860–1940 argues that social and economic class fails to explain the cross‐sectional differences in marital fertility as reported in the 1911 census of England and Wales. Szreter's conclusion made the book immediately influential, and it remains so. This finding matters a great deal for debates about the causes of the European fertility decline of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For decades scholars have argued whether the main forces at work were ideational or social and economic. This note reports a simple graphical and statistical re‐analysis of Szreter's own data. We show that social class does explain cross‐sectional differences in English marital fertility in 1911.     

Are children poor men's riches?

Abstract

Extract

Fertility declined fairly simultaneously in most western countries nearly a century ago. The question of which social groups were early in starting the decline is thought to have been answered: the common assertion is that the highest social groups started to control their fertility and, as time passed, that their new reproductive behaviour percolated down through the social layers. The current project on the secular decline in fertility in Norway has revealed that the families at the very top of the social hierarchy were the national pioneers in family limitation. The hypothesis in this article is, however, that family limitation in Norway also had an independent point of departure in the rural lower classes. In this article, I will therefore challenge the ‘general truth’ that there is always an inverse relationship between fertility and social status in the initial phase of the secular decline in fertility.     

Upward mobility and the demand for children: Evidence from China

This paper aims to investigate a new determinant of the demand for children: upward mobility. Upward mobility can affect the demand for children in two opposite directions: upward mobility means more resources to spend on childbearing and increases the demand for children; it also lowers the need to rely on children for old-age support and this leads to lower demand for children. In this paper, we use the difference between the subject's self-evaluations of the future and current social class as the measure of upward mobility, and fertility desire to represent the demand for children. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, we find that upward mobility significantly increases the demand for children, and the results are robust across various model specifications (pooled data regression, Poisson regression, and IV regression). The effect is concentrated among affluent and/or urban households, suggesting that those from more advantaged social-economic backgrounds appear to have a higher elasticity of fertility in response to upward mobility. Our results imply that improving upward mobility and public services such as education, health care, and social security would be effective to boost fertility in China.     

Fertility and old-age labor supply in aging China

This paper studies the fertility and old-age labor supply decisions of Chinese households along with the relaxation of fertility control and a rise in life expectancy. We first build an overlapping-generations model, where agents make endogenous fertility and old-age labor supply decisions in the presence of fertility constraint. In our model, children serve as an alternative saving technology since they provide intra-family transfer for their old-age parents. Our analytical results suggest that the impact of rising life expectancy on fertility depends on whether children are more like consumption goods or saving vehicles. Relaxing fertility control would induce more leisure in the old age, while a rise in life expectancy would lead to more old-age labor supply. We then calibrate the model to Chinese economy and find that a rise in life expectancy would discourage fertility as intra-family transfer becomes less important. In addition, the implementation of two-children policy rather than full relaxation of fertility control, a rise in child-rearing cost, and an expansion of social security would also reduce fertility, partly offsetting the effects of relaxing one-child policy.     

农民专业合作社对农户生产效益的影响——基于湖南葡萄种植行业的调研分析

以湖南长沙、岳阳、娄底、怀化、常德70家葡萄园农户的生产资料作为研究样本,对农民专业合作社与农户生产效益的关系进行研究,结果显示：农民专业合作社社员与非社员农户之间存在生产效益的差异,非社员在葡萄销售价格、每亩资金成本、每亩收入、每亩净收入这四个生产效益指标上都低于社员,体现出加入专业合作社的优越性。为鼓励更多农户入社,建议增加农民专业合作社示范点,并且增加对农民专业合作社特色农产品的扶持,使农业增产、农民增收,推动我国农业现代化进程。     

职业经理人与民营企业主的博弈及对策

所有权与经营权的分离是现代企业的本质特征。民营企业中职业经理人和民营企业主之间的关系协调与否对民营企业的发展至关重要。本文首先总结了我国职业经理人的发展现状,并指出了目前存在的问题。在此基础上,依据委托代理理论建立了职业经理人和民营企业主之间的博弈模型,并对模型结果进行了分析。最后,提出了协调职业经理人与民营企业主之间关系的对策和建议。     

三孩政策下普惠托育服务的供需现状及其提升路径

为探讨在三孩政策背景下普惠托育服务的供求关系,通过问卷实地结合的调查形式获取数据,借助Kruskal-Wallis检验统计量、Logistic回归模型对数据进行分析。结果表明：发展托育服务与实行生育政策相辅相成;目前托育服务的供给仍然不足,普惠托育是行业的发展方向。政府应加大对普惠托育服务的投入,增加市场活力;鼓励社会力量参与托育服务的提供,促进公私合作,共同推动普惠托育服务的发展。     

Regions and time in the European fertility transition: problems in the Princeton Project’s statistical methodology1

Much empirical social‐science research, including work in economic and demographic history, has relied on the analysis of published information on administrative districts. One famous example of this type of research, the Princeton Project on the Decline of Fertility in Europe (EFP), was carried out at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research in the 1960s and 1970s. This project aimed to characterize the decline of fertility that took place in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The project’s summary statements argued that social and economic forces played little role in bringing about the fertility transition. A central feature of the EFP argument is a series of statistical exercises which purport to show that changes in economic and social conditions exerted little influence on fertility. Two recent articles on Germany for this period have used similar data and methods to draw different conclusions. We show that the difference reflects problems in the Princeton project’s statistical methods. Those problems affect, potentially, virtually all quantitative research of this type. Our findings suggest cautious re‐thinking of conclusions based on this type of evidence, starting with the EFP.     

The Middle-Eastern marriage pattern? Malthusian dynamics in nineteenth-century Egypt

Malthus predicted that fertility rises with income and that people regulate fertility via regulating marriage. However, evidence on the Malthusian equilibrium has been mostly confined to Europe and East Asia. We employ Egypt's population censuses of 1848 and 1868 to provide the first evidence on the preindustrial Malthusian dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa. At the aggregate level, we document rural Egyptian women having a high fertility rate that is close to the Western European level, combined with low age at marriage and low celibacy rate, that are closer to the East Asian levels. This resulted in a uniquely high fertility regime that was probably offset by the high child mortality. Next, we provide individual-level evidence on the positive correlation between fertility and income (occupation). We find that the higher fertility of rural white-collar men is attributed to their marriage behaviour, and not to marital fertility. Specifically, white-collar men's higher polygyny explains 45 per cent of their fertility advantage, whereas their higher marriage rate and lower wife's age at marriage explains 55 per cent. Therefore, polygyny was an additional factor that led to a steeper income–fertility curve than in Western Europe by enabling the rural middle class to out-breed the poor.     

Recent declines in fertility in less developed countries,and what ‘population planners’ may learn from them

Significant and rapid fertility declines have occurred in many countries in the poor world over the past decade; many of these were unanticipated by demographers. Despite advances in statistical technique and demographic theory, little is yet known about the demographic rhythms of life in poor countries, or of the social forces behind them. Fertility decline, however, appears to have much to do with changes, economic and otherwise, within the family structure. The impact of ‘family planning’ programmes on fertility decline appears to have been exaggerated. ‘Population planners’ should be sensitive to the fact that a decline in fertility does not necessarily mean that an improvement in the standard of living has occurred, and they should not assume that reducing fertility automatically increases either the quality of life or the prospects for ‘development’.     

社会抚养压力与碳排放——基于STIRPAT模型与岭回归分析

根据STIRPAT模型，基于2003—2019年省际面板数据，对社会抚养压力与碳排放之间关系进行实证分析，将社会抚养压力细分为老年抚养压力和少儿抚养压力。研究发现：社会抚养压力与碳排放关系不显著；老年抚养压力与碳排放存在“U”形关系；少儿抚养压力与碳排放存在倒“U”形关系。最后将30个省区市通过总社会抚养压力的高低与经济发展水平的高低分成4个梯队，分别探讨这4个梯队的地区中，老年抚养压力、少儿抚养压力与碳排放之间的关系以及回归结果出现不同的原因。     

Swedish trade unions and the social democratic party: The formative years

Abstract

The history of labour movements in many countries of the Western world includes a period in which the relationship between the trade-union arm and the political arm undergoes significant change. This formative period is conditioned in an immediate way by the political framework and more generally by the economic and social milieu. In respect of the actors themselves—trade unions and party organisations—latter-day interpreters have frequently regarded developments of union-party relationships as a process in which the unions, to the extent they are successful and true to their character and objectives as trade unions, free themselves from party domination. ¹ The most obvious example is found in the works of the late Professor Selig Perlman, especially his A Theory of the Labor Movement, (New York, 1928). It is recognised here that Perlman did not discuss Swedish developments. The historical fragment which follows is intended to demonstrate that, for the Swedish experience, such an interpretation leaves much to be desired.     

理念与能力:职业经理人与家族企业融合的基石

当前,人力资本已是家族企业获取竞争优势、实现可持续发展的关键,职业经理人也日益成为家族企业最重要的人力资本.然而,职业经理人与家族企业之间关系紧张是比较普遍的社会现象.如何促进职业经理人与家族企业的组合--磨合--融合进程,已成为家族企业确保基业长青的重要课题.本文以浙江家族企业为研究对象,在调研基础上,分析职业经理人与家族企业的融合问题,认为家族企业创始人更新管理理念和职业经理人提升职业能力,是促成职业经理人与家族企业融合的基石.     

Was Malthus right? The relationship between population and real wages in Italian history, 1320 to 1870

In this article we investigate the relation between population and real wages in the Italian economy during the period 1320–1870. The main result is that the positive check is strong and statistically significant but the other equilibrating mechanism in the Malthusian model – the preventive check – based on the positive relationship between fertility and real wages does not operate in pre-industrial Italy. In contrast to the Malthusian hypothesis, we find a negative feedback from wage to population. The empirical result is clearly consistent with the theoretical framework of the “old age security motive”. We show, with a simple overlapping-generation model, that by allowing for substitution in a pre-industrial economy between child quantity and other assets (such as new seeds, better soybean quality, and new cultivation and irrigation methods) fertility may be negatively affected whenever income rises.     

Endogenous fertility cycles and childcare services

We construct a two-sector overlapping generation model with endogenous fertility, where one sector produces goods and the other produces childcare services. The elasticity of fertility-related expenditures on services is crucial for determining labor participation and whether fertility converges to a steady state with monotone or oscillation. If capital intensity in the goods sector is greater than the products of elasticity and capital intensity in the service sector, then capital per capita and fertility converge to a steady state monotonically. Conversely, they converge to a steady state with oscillations, otherwise. We find an inverse J-shaped relationship between fertility and elasticity.     

The Benefit of Mean Auditors: The Influence of Social Interaction and the Dark Triad on Unjustified Auditor Trust

Regulators and researchers have expressed concerns that social interaction leads auditors to unjustifiably trust managers, constituting a lack of sufficient professional skepticism. Using both an abstract laboratory experiment and a contextually rich experiment with practicing auditors we predict and find that higher Dark Triad auditors (those with higher levels of the shared core between psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) are relatively more resistant to lapses in professional skepticism due to the effects of social interaction. This is likely driven by higher Dark Triad auditors' callousness, lack of empathy, and lack of response to social stimuli. In contrast, while higher social interaction initially increases lower Dark Triad auditors' unjustified trust in managers, this effect reverses in subsequent interactions when lower Dark Triad auditors observe evidence suggesting managers have reported aggressively. These findings add to research on the effect of auditor personality traits, audit-client social interaction, and the interaction of these two variables, and suggest that practitioners and researchers account for the interplay of Dark Triad traits and social interaction and their effect on professional skepticism.     

Cointegration and causality between fertility and female labor participation in Taiwan: A multivariate approach

Applying Hsiao's version of Granger causality, this paper uncovers no causality from fertility to female labor participation and fails to find the expected relationship that female labor participation negatively predicts fertility in Taiwan. This indicates that working women in Taiwan do not necessarily have fewer children. The finding of this study contradicts the results obtained when using the conventional regression method which finds bidirectional relationship between fertility and female labor participation. In addition, this study detects that education exerts a great influence on female labor participation but not on fertility.     

Longevity,Fertility, and the Real Exchange Rate

We build a simple overlapping generation model to investigate the effect of life expectancy on the real exchange rate where fertility is chosen endogenously. The model reveals that, although the overall effect of life expectancy on the real exchange rate is not certain, longer life expectancy tends to cause the real exchange rate to depreciate by reducing fertility. Fertility thus serves as a mediator in the effect of life expectancy on the real exchange rate. Evidence from 148 economies (1980–2018) shows a statistically significant and robust negative relationship between life expectancy and the real exchange rate. It is estimated that a 1 year increase in life expectancy is associated with a 1.5 percent depreciation in the real exchange rate. The evidence also confirms the mediated effect of fertility. The mediated effect that fertility exerts accounts for 30 percent to 50 percent of the total effect, depending on the real exchange rate index used.     

Salary Vs. marginal revenue product under monopsony and competition: The case of professional basketball

Summary and Conclusions A large percentage of sports fans and the general public consider professional athletes to be overpaid. Of course, given their unique skills and abilities, athletes' salaries are high compared to other vocations. The relevant concept of overpayment, however, is in relation to a player's worth to his team. The fan or observer who recognizes that high salaries may in fact reflect players' abilities and contributions to team success, both on the playing surface and at the bank, is probably in the minority. In this paper, it has been argued that the exploitation of athletes depends on the structure of the labor market in professional sports. Despite their high salaries, professional athletes have not always (and some still do not) enjoyed a privilege available to both fans and owners — the privilege of selling their skills to the highest bidder. Previous studies have concluded that restrictions on baseball players' mobility depressed their salaries belowMRP's, and that removal of these restrictions resulted in salaries reflecting a player's value to his team. In this paper, it has been found that the same phenomenon has occurred in basketball, with salaries rising to the level ofMRP when players were given virtually unlimited freedom to negotiate. In addition, no significant evidence of racial discrimination was found in the NBA. The labor market in professional basketball might thus serve as a role model for baseball and football.