Robert T. Michael

An Economic Analysis of Marital Instability

This paper focuses on the causes of marital instability. Section I develops a theoretical analysis of marital dissolution, incorporating uncertainty about outcomes of marital decisions into a framework of utility maximization and the marriage market. Section II explores implications of the theoretical analysis with cross-sectional data, primarily the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity and the Terman sample. The relevance of both the theoretical and empirical analyses in explaining the recent acceleration in divorce rates is also discussed.

ENTRY INTO MARRIAGE AND PARENTHOOD BY YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN: THE INFLUENCE OF FAMILY BACKGROUND

We investigate the influence of family background on early entry into marriage and parenthood among white, Hispanic, and black men and women ages 14 to 22 in the first (1979) wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Family background is highly associated with early entry into marriage for whites of both genders and female Hispanics and also with early entry into parenthood for all groups except black males. Large group differences in family characteristics explain most of the difference between white and Hispanic women in early marriage and parenthood and about half the difference in early parenthood between black and white women but do not explain the observed variations among other race-gender groups.

Education and the derived demand for children.

A negative correlation across households between parents education and completed fertility is one of the most widely and frequently observed relationships in the empirical literature on human fertility behavior. In this paper I utilize the emerging economic theory of household behavior, which is also employed in other papers in this Supplement, to formulate an explanation for this observed negative correlation. In particular, the paper has two objectives: (1) to consider the mechanisms through which a couples level of education might affect their fertility and (2) to document the effects of education on one of these mechanisms that is an aspect of fertility control-the choice of a contraceptive technique. The following section briefly outlines the theoretical framework, and in Section III I discuss the mechanisms through which educations influence may operate. Throughout, the discussion is restricted to channels of influence from education to fertility; that is, the reverse causation is ruled out by assumption. The specific focus of this discussion should not be interpreted as an assertion of the exclusiveness or the primacy of educations influence on fertility. Section IV considers the fertility-control decision in greater detail. It also reports on my initial empirical work with the 1965 National Fertility Study, a nationwide sociological survey of 5,600 U.S. women undertaken by the Office of Population Research at

Private sexual behavior, public opinion, and public health policy related to sexually transmitted diseases : A US-British comparison

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to characterize sexual behavior and opinions about sex in the United States and Britain; implications are discussed for effective public health policy regarding sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States. METHODS Large-scale national probability surveys conducted in the 2 countries detailed sexual behavior, opinions, and the prevalence of STDs. RESULTS In comparison with that of Britain, the US population has greater variability in sexual behavior, less tolerant opinions about sexual behavior, and a higher STD prevalence and lower condom usage among men. CONCLUSIONS The survey data show compelling evidence from both countries of a strong association between number of sex partners and STD risk. In the United States relative to Britain, there is both greater dispersion in sexual behavior and a greater incidence of unconditional opposition to certain sexual practices. The former implies a need for strong public health policy to address the risks of STDs, but the latter implies strong opposition to that policy. This disjuncture between public health need and feasibility may contribute to the high US rate of STDs.

Youth Employment: Does Life Begin at 16?

Theoretical economic models, official labor force statistics, and most empirical studies of young workers disregard employment experience of students under age 16. Evidence from several sources, however, suggests that students ages 14 and 15 acquire substantial employment experience. Moreover, that experience is vastly different for black and white youths. Several policy-related issues, including causes of black-white differences in adult earnings, may deserve to be interpreted differently in the light of differentials in early employment experience. This employment experience of 14- and 15-year-olds in general and its racial pattern in particular should not continue to be ignored.

Estimating the Personal Distribution of Income with Adjustment for within- Family Variation

The 1970 and 1979 Current Population Surveys are used to compute the personal distribution of income. The major innovation in this paper is that all individuals in the household are not treated identically. In particular, children receive a different proportion of income than do adults. That proportion is estimated. Its variations with respect to household characteristics are discussed, and a final distribution of personal income is computed. That distribution has considerably fatter tails than does the one normally used.

The rise in divorce rates, 1960–1974: Age-specific components

This paper uses vital statistics data from 15 states in the Divorce Registration Area to decompose into age-specific components the rise in the aggregate divorce rate between 1960and 1974. While women in their twenties comprise only about 20 percent of the married population, they appear to have contributed over 60 percent of the growth in the divorce rate during the decade of the sixties.

Monitoring AIDS and other rare population events: a network approach

This paper replicates and extends an earlier attempt to use data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to track the distribution of AIDS across demographic subgroups. (The GSS asks respondents whether they know a person with AIDS [PWA].) The gender, racial, age, and regional composition of the set of PWAs reported by GSS respondents is compared with that of the official AIDS cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In an attempt to assess the accuracy of the GSS estimates, a similar analysis is performed in which GSS respondents are asked whether they know a homicide victim. Data from four consecutive GSS samples (1988, 1989, 1990, and 1991) are used, permitting a more detailed exploration of potential biases and problems with the network technique. In addition, time series data from the National Health Interview Survey on the percentage of people who know at least one PWA are used to validate the GSS data. Our earlier findings, that the GSS identifies proportionately more White and midwestern cases than are reported to the CDC, are corroborated by the additional data. Possible explanations for these discrepancies are given, and suggestions are made for improving the utility of the approach.

Children’s cognitive skill development in Britain and the United States

This paper compares the cognitive test scores of children in Great Britain and the United States in vocabulary, reading, mathematics, and memory of words and numbers. Children aged 5–9 years in Britain systematically outperform their US counterparts on reading and mathematics tests, while children aged 10–14 years show far fewer differences. In most comparisons for white children aged 10–14 years, there are no statistical differences in the distributions of test scores between the British and United States children. The explanation for the observed differences between the younger children in the two nations in reading and mathematics may be the earlier age of entry into formal schooling in Britain. The similarity of the observed skills of the older children in the two nations, given the differences in social and economic conditions experienced by those children, challenges the notion that these differences are critically important in the children’s cognitive development. The six tests used in this study are the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, subsets of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test in reading and math, the Wechsler Memory for Digit Span, and a subscale of the McCarthy Scale for Verbal Memory.

Allocation of Income within the Household

Allocation of Income within the Household develops an important new economic model of income distribution within the family, one that attempts to determine which family characteristics affect spending patterns. Professors Lazear and Michael base their work on an analysis of the 1972-73 Consumer Expenditure Survey and test their conclusions against the 1960-61 survey to verify the persistence of the effects discovered. They find, for example, that the average household spends