Torkild Hovde Lyngstad

Do Siblings' Fertility Decisions Influence Each Other?

Individuals’ fertility decisions are shaped not only by their own characteristics and life course paths but also by social interaction with others. However, in practice, it is difficult to disentangle the role of social interaction from other factors, such as individual and family background variables. We measure social interaction through the cross-sibling influences on fertility. Continuous-time hazard models are estimated separately for women’s first and second births. In addition to individual socioeconomic variables, demographic variables, and an unobserved factor specific to each sibling pair, siblings’ birth events and their timing enter as time-varying covariates. We use data from longitudinal population-wide Norwegian administrative registers. The data cover more than 110,000 sibling pairs and include the siblings’ fertility, education, income, and marital histories. Our results indicate that cross-sibling influences are relatively strong for the respondents’ first births but weak for the second parity transition.

Nordic Register Data and Their Untapped Potential for Criminological Knowledge

The Nordic countries have developed similar advanced register data systems for purposes of producing official statistics and research. The register’s advantages in criminological research include the ability to maintain data on the total population; the possibility of studying small subpopulations; a virtually continuous timeline in longitudinal data sets; using panel data designs with no sample attrition; having few or no nonresponses or other missing data; making connections between different observation units, such as family members; and the ability to construct research designs that are practically impossible with surveys. Use of register data for research requires legislation that protects the privacy of individuals and regulates access to data. Register data have been used extensively in demographic, economic, and sociological research. There is a huge and largely untapped potential for their use in criminological research.

Accounting for Genocide: How Many Were Killed in Srebrenica?

The takeover of the UN ‘safearea’ of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces inJuly 1995 was followed by the killing of alarge number of male Bosnian Muslim civilians,in what has been characterized as the worstmassacre in Europe since World War II. Thisarticle is based on a report submitted asevidence to the UN International CriminalTribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) inthe case against General Radislav Krstić,who became the first person to be convicted ofgenocide at this Tribunal. This case also formspart of the genocide charges against SlobodanMilošević, Radovan Karadžić and RatkoMladić. To our knowledge, this report isunique among genocide studies in its approach,using individual-level data to identify everyvictim in order to arrive at a highly reliableminimum estimate of the number of peoplekilled. This was possible because of efforts byhumanitarian organizations to register peoplewho disappeared during the war as well as theavailability of both pre- and post-conflictdata on individuals. We conclude that at least7,475 persons were killed after the fall ofSrebrenica. We also present estimates of theprobability of being a victim: more than 33%for Muslim men who were enumerated inSrebrenica in 1991.

Changes in Criminal Offending around the Time of Marriage

Objectives: The authors investigate whether the argument from life-course criminology that marriage leads to reduction in crime or whether the mechanisms leading to lower crime rates might take effect in a period of courtship before the transition to marriage. Method: Using data from population-wide, longitudinal Norwegian administrative registers, the authors estimate within-individual offending propensities before and after marriage for all men marrying in Norway 1997–2001. This approach allows for studying how offending develops over a decade around the time of marriage, for those men who actually marry. Results: The propensity to offend declines sharply prior to marriage. After marriage, there is a small increase in offending. This holds both for all offenses and when the analysis is restricted to felony offenses. Conclusions: The analysis provides no evidence for an effect of marriage on offending. Rather, the results suggest that the lower offending rates of marrieds develop over the years prior to marriage rather than as a consequence of the marriage.

Is mortality after childhood cancer dependent on social or economic resources of parents? A population-based study

Diagnostic and treatment protocols for childhood cancer are generally standardized, and therefore, survival ought to be fairly equal across social strata in societies with free public health care readily available. Nevertheless, our study explores whether there are disparities in mortality after childhood cancer in Norway depending on socioeconomic status of parents. Limited knowledge on differentials exists from earlier analyses. Discrete‐time hazard regression models for all‐cause mortality for the first 10 years after diagnosis were estimated for all Norwegian children (younger than 20 years), who were diagnosed with cancer during 1974–2007 (N = 6,280), using data from five national registers. Mortality was reduced by about 15% for children with highly educated mothers and children without siblings. These effects were most pronounced for cancers predicted to encompass intense, long‐lasting treatments resulting in chronic health problems. Neither earnings nor the marital status of parents affected childrens survival. This large, registry‐based study suggests that time constraints and various noneconomic rewards of parents from their education appears to have an impact on childhood cancer survival. It may be that children with resourceful parents are healthier at the outset and/or are more likely to avoid later health problems. It may also be that children of well‐informed and strongly involved parents are offered better treatment or are able to make better use of what is offered, for instance, by adhering more closely to recommendations for follow‐up treatment. The possibility of such differentials in offered and actual treatment should be addressed in future research.

Does Marriage Reduce Crime

The “marriage effect” is one of the most widely studied topics of life course criminology. The contemporary consensus is that marriage promotes desistance from crime. Most of the 58 studies reviewed here find a negative longitudinal association between marriage and crime. The results are more consistent among men. Studies that attend to relationship quality, such as the level of marital attachment, tend to produce particularly strong associations. Critical scrutiny of the evidence regarding the causal nature of the reported associations suggests, however, that claims about the restraining influence of marriage are overstated. None of the studies demonstrates evidence of direct (counterfactual) causality; no study has served a causal estimate unbiased by selection processes. Moreover, only a few studies address time ordering, and some of those show that desistance precedes rather than follows marriage. Evidence in support of the theoretical mechanisms responsible for the marriage effect is also mixed and insufficient. The criminological literature has been insensitive to the reality that entering a marital union is increasingly unlikely to signify the point at which a committed, high-quality relationship is formed.

Bereavement and divorce: Does the death of a child affect parents’ marital stability?

What effect does the death of a child have on parents’ rate of divorce? This study answers this and related research questions on parental bereavement and divorce. In addition to estimating an excess risk of divorce for bereaved parents, I test whether there are differences in the bereavement effect on divorce risk by family size, time since bereavement, and whether the couple has had another child. Detailed longitudinal data on first marriages taken from administrative registers covering the entire population of Norway and discrete-time hazard models are used to estimate effects of a child’s death on divorce risk. Results show that bereaved parents have higher divorce rates than other parents. This difference is observed across several family sizes and strengthens somewhat over time. Post-bereavement fertility does not affect the increase in divorce risk.

Trends in educational inequalities in mortality, seven types of cancers, Norway 1971–2002

BACKGROUND Knowledge about educational disparities in deaths from specific cancer sites is incomplete. Even more scant is information about time trends in educational patterns in specific cancer mortality. This study examines educational inequalities in Norway 1971-2002 for mortality in lung and larynx, colorectal, stomach, melanoma, prostate, breast and cervix uteri cancer. METHODS A data file encompassing all Norwegian inhabitants registered some time during 1971-2002 while aged 45-74 was constructed with linked information from administrative registers. During an exposure of more than 40 millions person-years, about 87,000 deaths in the analysed cancer types were registered. Absolute and relative inequalities during three periods were analysed by age-standardized deaths rates, hazard regression odds ratios and Relative Index of Inequality. RESULTS Educational inequalities in lung and related cancer mortality widened considerably from the 1970s to the 1990s for both sexes. The moderate educational gradient for stomach and cervix uteri cancer persisted, as did the weak gradient for colorectal cancer. No educational differences in prostate cancer were observed in any of the time periods. The modest inverse educational gradients in deaths from breast cancer and melanoma remained at the same level. CONCLUSION Among the seven cancer types examined in this study, only lung cancer mortality showed a clear widening in educational disparities. As lung cancer mortality constitutes a large proportion of all cancer deaths, this increase may result in larger disparities for overall cancer mortality. Some explanations for the observed patterns in cancer mortality are suggested.

The influence of offspring's sex and age at parents’ divorce on the intergenerational transmission of divorce, Norwegian first marriages 1980–2003

Whether a couple remain married or divorce has repeatedly been shown to be of importance for the marital stability of their children. This paper addresses the related question of whether the intergenerational transmission of divorce is contingent on the age at which parents divorced and the sex of the spouse who experienced the parents’ divorce. Using a population-wide data-set on Norwegian first marriages followed from 1980 to 2003, we find that the intergenerational transmission hypothesis holds also for Norway, that this relationship is stronger for women than for men, and that there is a negative age gradient in the transmission effect for women. The experience of multiple family transitions, such as a parents remarriage or a second divorce, does not affect couples’ divorce risk.

Immigrant mothers’ preferences for children’s sexes: A register-based study of fertility behaviour in Norway

Parental sex preferences have been documented in many native populations, but much less evidence is available on immigrants’ preferences for the sexes of their children. Using high-quality longitudinal register data from Norway, a country with a recent immigration history, we estimate hazards regression models of third birth risks by the sex composition of the first two children. A central question in the extant literature is whether the sex preferences of immigrant mothers match those observed in their country of origin, or if cultural adaption to local conditions is more important. Our analyses indicate that the sex preferences of immigrants generally match those previously documented for their native population, especially in the case of son preferences. The pattern of sex preferences is unmodified by the mother’s exposure to the host society. In sum, our evidence generally supports theories emphasizing cultural persistence in preferences, rather than theories of adaption or immigrant selectivity.