Barbara S. Okun

Educational stratification among Arabs and Jews in Israel: Historical disadvantage, discrimination, and opportunity

Arabs in Israel are a heterogeneous but largely underprivileged minority with a history of disadvantage in several domains, including education and employment. In this paper, we document changes in their attainment of various educational levels across cohorts born from the mid-1920s to the 1970s. We make comparisons among different Arab religious groups, between men and women, and between Arabs and the majority Jewish populations in Israel. We find that over consecutive birth cohorts, substantial ethnic differences in educational attainment have narrowed at the lower levels of schooling, but have increased at higher levels. Moreover, the results indicate that the disadvantage of Muslim Arabs in terms of entry into and completion of high school can be accounted for only partially by differences in the social status of their parents and characteristics of their neighbourhoods. The findings suggest that long-term historical differences among groups and discriminatory practices towards Arabs are important factors in explanations of disparities in educational attainment.

What do we know about the timing of fertility transitions in Europe

The Princeton project on the decline of fertility in Europe (the European Fertility Project) suggested that this historical fertility transition occurred virtually simultaneously in a wide variety of economic and social environments. This finding has been cited widely as evidence for an innovation/diffusion view of fertility transitions. We demonstrate that the demographic methods used to date the fertility transition in Europe—primarily Ig, and (to a lesser extent) the Coale-Trussell M&m indices—may fail to detect the initial stages of a fertility transition and therefore cannot be used as the basis for strong statements about the timing of transitions. We review these measurement problems and their implications for the current understanding of the European fertility transition.

The Demographic Transition Then and Now: Processes, Perspectives, and Analyses

Fifty years have passed since the post–World War II development of demography as an academic field. During this time, one of the central focuses of research has been the study of demographic and fertility transitions. The authors reviewa selection of research developments and analytic issues that have appeared in the literature. After presenting, in roughly chronological order, the general development of this research work, they raise questions concerning theory and methodology. In doing so, they argue that some research directions have been overemphasized to the neglect of others.

Evaluating Methods for Detecting Fertility Control: Coale and Trussell's Model and Cohort Parity Analysis

In their attempts to distinguish empirically between the innovation/diffusion and adaptation views of fertility transition, researchers have pointed out that evidence of fertility control practised by a significant proportion of women in pre-transition populations would render claims that fertility fell as a result of innovative behaviour less convincing. This paper uses simulation techniques to evaluate the ability of two indirect measures of fertility control, Coale and Trussells model (M & m) and Cohort Parity Analysis (CPA), to identify the presence or absence of fertility controllers, as well as to detect changes in the extent of control. We conclude that neither M & m nor CPA can be relied on to identify accurately a minority of controllers in a population of interest. These findings suggest the need for a reassessment of some of the evidence cited in the debate over alternative theories of fertility decline.

The effects of ethnicity and educational attainment on Jewish marriage patterns: Changes in Israel, 1957–1995

Abstract. This paper presents a study of changes in marriage patterns among the Jewish population of Israel over nearly 40 years. Using data from four Israeli Censuses spanning experience from the late 1950s to the mid 1990s, we employ Schoens harmonic mean model in a multivariate framework to consider, simultaneously, changes over time in age-specific marriage rates by ethnicity and educational attainment. Our analyses point to a number of clear and interesting findings: (1) an increasingly positive association between marriage and educational attainment, especially for women; (2) the continuing central role of ethnicity in mate selection, despite important declines in ethnic endogamy over the period; (3) a decrease in the prominence of unions of ‘exchange’; (4) some evidence of increasing ‘block’ endogamy among Jews of Asian and African origin; and (5) a small increase in educational homogamy over the period. Interpretations and implications of these findings are discussed.

The Public Sector, Family Structure, and Labor Market Behavior: Jewish Mothers in Israel

Recent research has suggested that the characteristics of paid work affect trade-offs between womens activities in the family and employment spheres. One argument suggests that public sector employment, more so than private sector employment, provides conditions that are amenable to the combination of paid work and family. In this article, the authors exploit panel-type data to compare the labor market behavior of Jewish Israeli women in the years following childbirth and focus on differential labor market activity among women with employment histories in the public and private sectors. Their findings point to significant interaction effects between previous sector of employment and childbearing behavior and suggest that the welfare state, through the provision of “family friendly” employment opportunities, plays a role in encouraging womens paid labor in the years following childbirth.

Sex preferences, family planning, and fertility : An Israeli subpopulation in transition

This article examines how Asian and African Jews who immigrated to Israel adjusted their sex preferences to a modern Israeli society without preferences. Most immigrants of Asian and African origins arrived in Israel during the late 1940s and 1950s. Findings indicate that earlier Jewish marriage cohorts of North African and Middle Eastern origin had clear preferences for male children. Data were obtained from a 1974-75 fertility survey among a random sample of married urban Jewish women aged 18-54 years. The sample is divided into women who married before and after 1960. Hazard analyses of the initiation of contraceptive use or abortion reveals that women of Asian or African origin who married before 1960 and had a parity of 4 and mostly boys were 4 times more likely to use birth control than women with more girls. Women with balanced sex ratios of boys and girls were 6 times more likely to use birth control as women with more girls than boys. Women with 4 or more children and mostly boys were less likely to have a fifth child than women with 4 children and mostly girls. Asian or African origin women born after 1960 had lower fertility than women born before 1960. Contraceptive use among women with two children was unrelated to son preference. There was evidence of a preference for a balanced sex composition among European or American origin women in earlier or later marriage cohorts. It is concluded that son preference changed as part of the immigrants social adjustment to their new socioeconomic and cultural living conditions.

Insight into ethnic flux: marriage patterns among jews of mixed ancestry in Israel.

Increases in ethnic and racial intermarriage in immigrant countries have led to growing proportions of persons of mixed ancestry and backgrounds. The marriage patterns of these persons both reflect and affect the salience and meaning of current forms of ethnicity and race in these societies. This article analyzes the marriage behavior of children of ethnically mixed unions in the Jewish population of Israel. Among persons of mixed ancestry, educational attainment plays a large role in whether they marry Ashkenazim or less economically advantaged Mizrahim. Such patterns suggest that intermarriage in Israel does not necessarily reduce ethnic differences in socioeconomic status or the salience of ethnicity among disadvantaged groups.

Distinguishing stopping behavior from spacing behavior with indirect methods.

A major controversy regarding fertility transitions in historical populations concerns whether the process consisted mainly of the diffusion of an innovation in stopping behavior termination of childbearing before the end of the reproductive lifespan or an adaptation to a new social and economic climate through more extensive spacing behavior deliberate prolongation of the intervals between births. The relative importance of stopping and spacing behaviors in fertility transitions also has implications for the general understanding of the way fertility-control decisions are made. This paper uses simulation methods to examine the ability of summary measures such as mean age at last birth and mean birth intervals to distinguish between the influence of increased stopping and spacing behaviors in fertility transitions. The author finds that while increases in some forms of spacing behavior do have a nonneglible negative impact upon mean age at last birth so that modest reductions in age last birth cannot on their own be used as conclusive evidence of increases in stopping behavior a technique such as McDonalds used together with changes in mean age at last birth can clearly differentiate between spacing behavior and stopping behavior. She also investigates the small-sample properties of mean age at last birth and finds that observed differences in mean age at last birth which are on the order of one or two years are unlikely to be due solely to the random variation which recurs in the small samples typically found in family reconstitution studies. The author found in subsequent analysis that examining changes in the pattern of increase of mean age at last birth with age at marriage is a more powerful way of distinguishing stopping from spacing than is examining changes in the overall mean age at last birth. Finally the author found that changes in the means of interbirth intervals prior to the last closed interval stratified by final parity are good diagnostic tools for distinguishing between stopping and spacing even when stopping behavior is less than 100% effective.

Religiosity and contraceptive method choice: the Jewish population of Israel.

The primary purpose of this paper is to explore therelationship between religiosity and contraceptivemethod choice, among users of contraception. Weanalyze a representative sample of 1,751 married urbanIsraeli Jewish women interviewed in 1987–1988. Ourfindings indicate that the contraceptive choices ofreligious women are determined largely byconsiderations unrelated to religious doctrine. Acombination of factors, including the suitability ofspecific methods to fertility control needs, peerinfluences, and other cultural effects, appear tomodify the acceptance and application of a particularreligious theology.