The Reciprocal Effects Of Female Labour Force Participation And Fertility

This Staff Discussion Note examines the effect of gender-based legal restrictions and other policy choices and demographic characteristics on female labor force participation. Drawing on a large and novel panel data set of gender-related legal restrictions, the study finds that restrictions on women’s rights to inheritance and property, as well as legal impediments to undertaking economic activities such as opening a bank account or freely pursuing a profession, are strongly associated with larger gender gaps in labor force participation. These factors have a significant additional impact on female labor force participation over and above the effects of demographic characteristics and policies. In many cases, the gender gaps caused by these restrictions also have macro-critical effects in terms of an impact on GDP. The results from this study suggest that it would be beneficial to level the playing field by removing obstacles that prevent women from becoming economically active if they choose to do so. In recommending equal opportunities, however, this study does not intend to render a judgment of countries’ broadly accepted cultural and religious norms.

Canada is a country of immigrants of different ethnic origins. This is the first volume that provides the demographic profile vital to an understanding of this country. Twenty-five of the top demographers in Canada draw upon 1986 and 1981 census figures and social surveys.

Status Enhancement and Fertility: Reproductive Responses to Social Mobility and Educational Opportunity provides a theoretical framework in which research findings on the socioeconomic determinants of fertility may be integrated. Starting with an introductory chapter on the substantive scope of the book, separate chapters provide a detailed review, appraisal, and synthesis of the complex research literature on social mobility and fertility; examine various statistical methodologies and suggest some fruitful avenues future research might pursue; and discuss the role of education in enhancing the status of women and the main intervening variables that link education to reproductive behavior. Subsequent chapters examines female labor force participation, the value of children, infant and child mortality, age at marriage and first birth, and family planning knowledge and practice. The final chapter discusses policy issues derived from models and assessments presented in the preceding chapters. This book may be used as an upper division or graduate level text in population courses.

ASEAN economies have much insight to offer the world, from investor behaviour during COVID-19, and deep-rooted attitudes towards risk and corruption, to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals through the gender perspective.

The lucid, straightforward Preface of this Handbook by the two editors and the comprehenSIve perspec tives offered in the Introduction by one ofthem leave little for a Foreword to add. It is therefore limIted to two relevant but not intrinsically related points vis-a-vis research on marriage and the family in the interval since the fIrst Handbook (Christensen, 1964) appeared, namely: the impact on this research ofthe politicization of the New RIght! and of the Feminist Enlightenment beginning in the mid-sixties, about the time of the fIrst Handbook. In the late 1930s Willard Waller noted: "Fifty years or more ago about 1890, most people had the greatest respect for the institution called the family and wished to learn nothing whatever about it. . . . Everything that concerned the life of men and women and their children was shrouded from the light. Today much of that has been changed. Gone is the concealment of the way in which life begins, gone the irrational sanctity of the home. The aura of sentiment which once protected the family from discussion clings to it no more .... We wantto learn as much about it as we can and to understand it as thoroughly as possible, for there is a rising recognition in America that vast numbers of its families are sick-from internal frustrations and from external buffeting. We are engaged in the process of reconstructing our family institutions through criticism and discussion" (1938, pp. 3-4).

Includes the section "Book notes".