Nan E. Johnson

Educational Inequality in Adult Mortality: An Assessment with Death Certificate Data from Michigan

Education was added to the U.S. Standard Certificate of Death in 1989. The current study uses Michigan’s 1989–1991 death certificates, together with the 1990 Census, to evaluate the quality of data on education from death certificates and to examine educational differences in mortality rates. With log-rates modeling, we systematically analyze the variability in educational differences in mortality by race and sex across the adult life cycle. The relative differences in mortality rates between educational levels decline with age at the same pace for all sex and race categories. Women gain a slightly greater reduction in mortality than men by reaching the secondary-education level, but a modestly smaller reduction by advancing beyond it. Blacks show a reduction in predicted mortality rates comparable to whites’ by moving from the secondary to the postsecondary level of education but experience less reduction than whites by moving from the primary to the secondary level. Thus, the secular decline in mortality rates that generally accompanies historical improvements in education might actually be associated with an increase in the relative differences between blacks’ and whites’ mortality. We discuss limitations of the data and directions for future research.

The racial crossover in comorbidity, disability, and mortality.

This study analyzed one respondent per household who was age 70 or more at the time of the household’s inclusion in Wave 1 (1993–1994) and whose survival status was determinable at Wave 2 (1995–1996) of the Survey on Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old (AHEAD Survey). At age 76 at Wave 1, there was a racial crossover in the cumulative number of six potentially fatal diagnoses (chronic lung disease, cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and stroke) from a higher cumulative average number for blacks to a higher average number for whites. Also, there was a racial crossover at age 86 in the cumulative average number of disabilities in the Advanced Activities of Daily Living (AADLs), from a higher average for blacks to a higher average for whites. Between Waves 1 and 2, there was a racial crossover in the odds of mortality from higher odds for blacks to higher odds for whites; this occurred at about age 81. The results are consistent with the interpretation that the racial crossover in comorbidity (but not the crossover in AADL disability) propelled the racial crossover in mortality.

Relative Income, Race, and Fertility

If a white husbands income is higher than expected for men of his age, race, education, job characteristics, and region, economic theory predicts higher complete fertility for his wife. In the present study one per cent public use samples from the 1970 Census for California and Hawaii were used to examine the effect of relative income on Japanese, Chinese, and black fertility. Relative income was defined in two ways: (1) with regard to earnings of husbands of the same race, education, employment, and state; (2) with regard to earnings of white husbands of the same education, employment, and state. High relative incomes defined in each way were associated with increased completed fertility of Japanese and Chinese in Hawaii, where Orientals form a majority. Neither definition of high relative income was associated with the completed fertility of Japanese, Chinese, or blacks in California, where non-whites form a minority. The results suggest that the effect of relative income on fertility for a racial grou...

Size of Farm or Size of Family: Which Comes First?

Efforts to control rampant population growth in sub-Saharan Africa have been stymied by confusion between the potential causes and consequences of high fertility in the region. A controversy has surfaced over the causal direction of the fundamental relationship between human fertility and size of landholdings. Members of one school of thought claim that farm couples modify their fertility behaviour according to the amount of land they own or operate. Yet others argue that the size of landholdings varies as a function of family size (an indicator of the availability of family labour). In the present study we use a two-stage least-squares regression on data from a 1988 survey of 747 farm households in Rwanda to disaggregate and compare the strengths of these two possible paths of influence. The results show that landholdings exert a positive influence on human reproduction, but not the reverse. Moreover, this influence is slightly stronger for couples who own all the land they operated, probably because the...

Polygamy and Fertility in Somalia

The 1983 Somali Family Health Survey showed that polygamy and monogamy selected women with different social characteristics. Wives in polygamous unions were prone to be younger at first martial cohabitation and to have previous marital disruptions. Since a young age at first cohabitation and number of previous marriages have opposite effects on the cumulative fertility rate of women, the difference in this rate between wives in polygamous and monogamous unions vanished when both factors were controlled in a multivariate analysis.

RELIGIOUS DIFFERENTIALS IN REPRODUCTION: THE EFFECTS OF SECTARIAN EDUCATION

College-educated Catholic women in the 1976 National Survey of Family Growth had higher actual and expected fertility than did college educated Protestants. Moreover, Catholic colleges or universities had a pronatalist effect on alumnae. Thus, a significant part of the higher Catholic than Protestant cumulative fertility among college-educated women arose from the greater propensity of such Catholics to attend sectarian schools and colleges. The implications are explored.

Matriarchy, polyandry, and fertility amongst the Mosuos in China.

A survey of 232 households of the Mosuo minority group in Yunnan Province, Peoples Republic of China, suggested that polyandrous matriarchy did not raise the birth rate per household, but lowered the community birth rate by restricting many womens chances of marrying. The results imply that tolerance by the national government of polyandry within certain minority groups (e.g. Mosuos and Tibetans) will not prevent but may aid the attainment of zero population growth by China in the twenty-first century.

Southern traditionalism and sex-role ideology: A research note

Sociological literature, as well as popular folklore, suggests the existence of a Southern regional subculture, of which sex-role traditionalism is an integral part. To test the empirical validity of this assumption, the present study employed the 1975 National Fertility Study data, a probability sample of 3,403 currently married white women, of whom eight sex-role questions were asked. A factor analysis of these questions was used to calculate a sex-role summary score for each respondent. Wifes employment in 1975 and her attainment of high levels of education were the two strongest predictors of a nontraditional sex-role score. The sex-role attitudes of Southern and non-Southern women did not differ significantly. The implications for research and policy are discussed.

Son preference and child replacement in Bangladesh: a new look at the child survival hypothesis

Birth history data from women in the 1975-76 Bangladesh Fertility Survey were used to search for intentions to replace dead children. The median intervals between successive births of orders (i) and (i + 1) were not shorter when some siblings of orders below (i) had died. Nor was the median duration between the death of a child and the first posthumous birth shorter when the dead child was a boy or when it was survived by fewer than two brothers. The median intervals were generally shorter when the mother lived in an urban rather than a rural area but this difference was attributable only to the shorter duration of breast-feeding by urban women. These results disputed the notions that the timing of births was deliberately quicker to replace a dead child, that attempts at replacement were sex-selective, or that child replacement intentions were stronger in urban than in rural populations.

Social Integration and Healthy Aging in Japan: How Gender and Rurality Matter

The current study analyzed the 1999 and 2001 waves of the Nihon University Japanese Longitudinal Study of Aging. Two measures of social integration were associated with lower risks of being physically disabled or depressed at Wave 1 and with a lower risk of progressing into deeper levels of physical disability and depression by Wave 2. Ceteris paribus, compared to elderly urbanites, elderly ruralites had a much higher risk of being physically disabled but much lower odds of being depressed. And compared to elderly men, elderly women had similar risks of being physically disabled but much higher odds of being depressed. Suggestions are made on how future research on longevity in Japan, the world’s most longevous nation, can explore the links among social integration, place, gender, and the postponement of mortality.