Joshua R. Goldstein

Marriage delayed or marriage forgone? New cohort forecasts of first marriage for U.S. women

Do recent declines in first marriage rates signal that an increasing proportion of women will remain single their entire lives, or merely that they are postponing marriage to older ages? Our forecasts for cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s suggest that marriage will remain nearly universal for American women-close to 90 percent of women are predicted to marry. However, separate forecasts by educational attainment reveal a new socioeconomic pattern of first marriage: Whereas in the past, women with more education were less likely to marry, recent college graduates are now forecast to marry at higher levels despite their later entry into first marriage. This educational crossover, which occurs for both black women and white women in recent cohorts, suggests that marriage is increasingly becoming a province of the most educated, a trend that may become a new source of inequality for future generations. Forecasts presented here use data from the 1995 Current Population Survey and compare estimates from the Hernes model with those from the Coale-McNeil model

The leveling of divorce in the united states

Is the recent plateau in crude divorce rates due to compositional changes in the married population or to a fundamental change in the long-term trend of rising marital instability? I use refined measures of period divorce rates to show that the leveling of divorce rates appears to be real. Compositional factors do little to explain the end to the more than century-long pattern of rising divorce. Increases in cohabitation also fail to explain the plateau. New theories are needed to explain the determinants of divorce rates at the population level.

How 4.5 million Irish immigrants became 40 million Irish Americans: demographic and subjective aspects of the ethnic composition of white Americans.

In 1980 for the first time the U.S. Census contained a subjective question about ethnic identity. Natural increase intermarriage and subjective identification contribute to the current size of each ethnic group. Simulations for the British- Irish- German- and Italian-origin populations show the interaction among time of arrival overall fertility and mortality trends and differential fertility in determining natural increase. The subjective identification with some ethnic groups notably the Irish and Germans exceeds what natural increase would imply while identification with other ethnic groups falls short of what demographic processes would imply. Loglinear models of ethno-religious intermarriage show that religious diversity is an important factor in the diffusion of Irish and German identities while the relative religious homogeneity of the British and Italians limits the diffusion of those identities. This paper was originally presented at the 1993 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. (EXCERPT)

Parenting Across Racial and Class Lines: Assortative Mating Patterns of New Parents Who Are Married, Cohabiting, Dating or No Longer Romantically Involved

We examine the assortative mating patterns of new parents who are married, cohabiting, romantically involved and no longer romantically involved. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, we find that relationship status at the time of a birth depends mainly on fathers race rather than on whether mother and fathers race/ethnicity differ. Crossing race/ethnic lines does not appear to have much effect on relationship transitions following a birth. Rather, parents are less likely to marry after a birth if one parent is black, and the relationships of Hispanic couples are particularly stable. Crossing educational lines has little effect on relationship status at birth, but same-education couples had a slightly lower risk of divorce following the birth.

Relationships between period and cohort life expectancy: gaps and lags.

This paper offers an empirical and analytic foundation for regarding period life expectancy as a lagged indicator of the experience of real cohorts in populations experiencing steady improvement in mortality. We find that current period life expectancy in the industrialized world applies to cohorts born some 40–50 years ago. Lags track an average age at which future years of life are being gained, in a sense that we make precise. Our findings augment Ryders classic results on period–cohort translation.

Kinship networks that cross racial lines: The exception or the rule?

I estimate the frequencies of interracial kin relations, an important indicator of the isolation of racial groups in the United States. I use two techniques to estimate the size and heterogeneity of extended families. First, I develop a simple model that takes account only of kinship network sizes and intermarriage levels by race. This model allows a crude estimation of the frequency of multiracial kinship networks. Second, I produce more precise empirical estimates using a new hot-deck imputation method for synthesizing kinship networks from household-level survey data (the June 1990 Current Population Survey and the 1994 General Social Survey). One in seven whites, one in three blacks, four in five Asians, and more than 19 in 20 American Indians are closely related to someone of a different racial group. Despite an intermarriage rate of about 1%, about 20% of Americans count someone from a different racial group among their kin.

Found in translation? A cohort perspective on tempo-adjusted life expectancy

What does tempo-adjusted period life expectancy measure? Taking a cohort perspective, I show that under conditions of constant linear mortality shifts the tempo-adjusted period indicator translates exactly to the cohort born e* 0 (t) years earlier. I discuss the implications of cohort translation for the interpretation and application of tempo-adjusted period life expectancy.

Bayesian forecasting of cohort fertility

There are signs that fertility in rich countries may have stopped declining, but this depends critically on whether women currently in reproductive ages are postponing or reducing lifetime fertility. Analysis of average completed family sizes requires forecasts of remaining fertility for women born 1970–1995. We propose a Bayesian model for fertility that incorporates a priori information about patterns over age and time. We use a new dataset, the Human Fertility Database (HFD), to construct improper priors that give high weight to historically plausible rate surfaces. In the age dimension, cohort schedules should be well approximated by principal components of HFD schedules. In the time dimension, series should be smooth and approximately linear over short spans. We calibrate priors so that approximation residuals have theoretical distributions similar to historical HFD data. Our priors use quadratic penalties and imply a high-dimensional normal posterior distribution for each countrys fertility surface. Forecasts for HFD cohorts currently aged 15–44 show consistent patterns. In the United States, Northern Europe, and Western Europe, slight rebounds in completed fertility are likely. In Central and Southern Europe, East Asia, and Brazil, there is little evidence for a rebound. Our methods could be applied to other forecasting and missing-data problems with only minor modifications.

Population momentum for gradual demographic transitions: an alternative approach

In this article, I derive a simple formula for approximating the ultimate size of a population that undergoes a gradual transition to replacement fertility. I model the fertility transition by specifying a linear frontier on the Lexis surface across which a change in fertility is instantaneous. Gradual transitions result from variations in the slope of this frontier. This framework can be used to reproduce and understand previous studies of population momentum and gradual transitions.

From Patrick to John F.: Ethnic Names and Occupational Success in the Last Era of Mass Migration

Taking advantage of historical census records that include full first and last names, we apply a new approach to measuring the effect of cultural assimilation on economic success for the children of the last great wave of immigrants to the United States. We created a quantitative index of ethnic distinctiveness of first names and show the consequences of ethnic-sounding names for the occupational achievement of the adult children of European immigrants. We find a consistent tendency for the children of Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrants with more “American”-sounding names to have higher occupational achievement. About one-third of this effect appears to be due to social class differences in name-giving, and the remaining two-thirds to signaling effects of the names themselves. An exception is found for Russian, predominantly Jewish, immigrants, where we find a positive effect of ethnic naming on occupational achievement. The divergent effects of our new measure of cultural assimilation, sometimes hurting and sometimes helping, lend historical empirical support to more recent theories of the advantages of different paths to assimilation. The effects of ethnic first names are also found for a restricted analysis of recognizably ethnic last names, suggesting that immigrants’ success depended on being perceived as making an effort to assimilate rather than hiding their origins.