The Irish at the end of the nineteenth century were famous for three demographic behaviours: they migrated in huge numbers, were reluctant to marry, and had large families when they did marry.This paper focuses on one explanation for the second facet of this Irish demographic regime, marriage patterns. More than one observer has claimed that Irish emigrants to other countries were unusually likely to remain single and argued on this basis that nuptiality in Ireland reflected cultural traits that traveled with emigrants when they left the country. We consider this argument by studying the nuptiality of Irish emigrants in the context of the country that consistently drew a majority of all Irish emigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States. We use census samples to study whether and how much the nuptiality of Irish-Americans differed from other Americans, and find that the nuptiality of Irish-Americans in this period is both less distinctive and more complex than has been thought. Irish nuptiality and Irish demographic history more broadly have a rich historiography. 1 Most authors view Irish demographic behaviour as conditioned by a cultural inheritance but driven primarily by changing economic conditions. These authors, who include Connell, Guinnane, Kennedy, and Walsh, stress different aspects of economic conditions but agree that the peculiarities ofIrish culture, if any, playa small role in Irish marriage patterns. An alternative view stresses distinctive Irish cultural traits. Arguments differ, but most suggest a form ofsexual repression thatmade Irish men and women unwilling to marry. 2 Our paper is a cautionary tale. Irish-Americans were more likely to remain unmarried than were natives, and in fact were less likely to marry than just about any other European immigrant group in the United States. But the differences were smaller than implied by the historiography. Ifwe compare Irish immigrants to the natives most like them - urban people of relatively low socio-economic status - we see that the Irish in the United States were not so exotic after all. We find important differences between male and female marriage patterns, differences that are not consistent with the culture story. In fairness, we should note that most of the systematic, quantitative evidence on Irish-American nuptiality pertains to the twentieth century. We present no evidence on this later period, focusing instead on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when marriage patterns in Ireland became most distinctive.

The long awaited sequel to Birren and Bengtson's landmark text, EMERGENT THEORIES OF AGING has arrived. Dedicated to James E. Birren, this volume continues to explore and expand upon the bases of theory-building and research design in aging. Renowned researchers examine biological, biomedical, psychological, and social science concepts and theories. In addition, this volume contains a new section that explores the potentials for successful interventions by applying theories to gerontological practice, public policy, and mental health and aging. This text is a valuable resource for gerontologists, academics, psychologists, and graduate-level students.

In a 1789 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson presented statistical support for his proposal that the debt of one generation should not be transferred to the next. He applied this principle to individual as well as national debt. Historians have regarded this proposal as impractical, and influenced by notions of generational rights prevalent in Paris during Jefferson's sojourn there. They have ignored the relevance of the late-18th-century practices of political demography and quantitative thinking. Jefferson's letter shows he was well versed in these practices, while mistakes in his calculations show how novel and difficult quantitative demographic thinking was in this era. Scholars should recognize the innovativeness of Jefferson's methods, try to understand the reasons for his miscalculations (which relate partly to pecularities of early republican demographic trends), and acknowledge the relevance of Jefferson's proposal to such late-20th-century generational issues as the viability of social security programs and environmental concerns.

Researchers have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the impact of Social Security on retirement, with mixed findings. However, the means-tested program Old Age Assistance (OAA) dwarfed Social Security until the 1950s and coincided with the early decline in elderly labor force participation. Also, OAA benefits were determined by the states – a key source of policy variation. I estimate the relationship between OAA benefits and elderly participation using individual data from the 1940 and 1950 Censuses. OAA's impact is found to be strong and implies that participation would have risen slightly instead of falling if benefits had not increased during the 1940s.

This article investigates the fertility of Danish twins born during the periods 1870–1910 and 1953–64 in order to pursue two central questions for understanding human reproduction: Do genetic dispositions influence fertility and fertility‐related behavior? Does the relevance of the “nature versus nurture” debate shift over time or with demographic regimes? The authors find that genetic influences on fertility exist, but that their relative magnitude and pattern are contingent on gender and on the socioeconomic environment experienced by cohorts. Among females born in 1880–90 and after 1955, about 30–50 percent of the variance in fertility is due to genetic influences; these influences are substantially smaller for earlier and for interim birth cohorts. Male fertility is generally subject to smaller genetic and larger shared‐environment effects than female fertility. Because genetic effects are most prevalent in situations with deliberately controlled fertility and relatively egalitarian socioeconomic opportunities, the authors propose that the genetic dispositions affect primarily fertility behavior and motivations for having children. Analyses of fertility motivations, measured by age of first attempt to have a child, support this interpretation.

We examine trends in self-employment among white and black men from 1910 to 1990 using Census and CPS microdata. Self-employment rates fell over most of the century and then started to rise after 1970. For white men, we find that the decline was due to declining rates within industries, but was counterbalanced somewhat by a shift in employment towards high self-employment industries. Recently, the increase in self-employment was caused by an end to the within industry decline and the continuing shift in employment towards high self-employment industries. We find that the trends in self-employment average returns do not easily explain the decline in self-employment from 1950 to 1970, nor the increase from 1970 to 1990. We also find that changes in tax rates, social security benefits, and immigration patterns do not explain the recent upturn in self-employment. For black men, we find that the self-employment rate remained at a level of roughly one-third the white rate from 1910 to 1990. The large and constant gap between the black and the white rates is not due to blacks being concentrated in low self-employment rate industries, but is consistent with job opportunities outside of self-employment increasing relative to those in self-employment. However, more recently the relative earnings of blacks in self-employment rose more than relative earnings for whites the near constancy of the relative self-employment rates more surprising. We also find that absent continuing forces holding down black self-employment, a simple inter-generational model of self-employment suggests that black and white rates would converge quickly.

Evidence exists that welfare recipients migrate between states to seek more generous benefits, potentially leading states to lower AFDC benefits to avoid such welfare migration. Taken further, this raises the specter of states competitively lowering benefits in reaction to similar moves by other states. This model of policymaking assumes that benefits are solely a function of state characteristics. If benefits depend on the threat of welfare migration or other interstate competition, however, one must account for possible spillovers. Chapter 1 presents tests for the presence of welfare-policy spillovers in a panel of 47 states over the period 1979-1995. I find weak evidence of spillovers, even in the presence of state fixed effects and political and budgetary-control variables. Many studies analyzing the impact of AFDC on a woman's choice of household structure have limited themselves to one or another group of women: only unmarried women, only mothers, only teenage mothers, etc. In Chapter 2 I estimate a multinomial logit model of household structure that moves beyond previous studies in several ways. First, it allows marital status and fertility to vary across choices. Second, it captures the woman's earnings potential through predicted wages estimated from a model that accounts for selection bias in observed earnings. Third, it moves beyond the traditional focus on AFDC and Food Stamps to include state-specific values of federal energy assistance and state-funded general assistance programs as well as state-level AFDC policies other from the maximum benefit level. Cohabitation among single women has risen over many years. Beyond the well-known increase in premarital cohabitation, state welfare policies may encourage low-income women to coreside with other adults to save money. Using the 1990 Census, Chapter 3 tests for evidence that state welfare policies-including benefit levels, penalties for cohabitors' income, and disregards of unearned income-alter the proportion of women who live with other adults outside of marriage. Greater levels of education, which may represent higher earnings potential, are associated with more marriage among Black women but more cohabitation among Whites. States with more generous AFDC benefits also have fewer married women, as has been found in previous studies. The strictest policy on cohabitors' contributions toward housing costs has an unexpected positive relation to the probability of a woman cohabiting. A broader policy concerning cohabitors' contributions toward shared household expenses has no impact on marriage or cohabitation, however, while a similar policy treating a welfare recipient's unpredicted earnings more leniently has the expected positive impact on cohabitation.

This study investigated the effects of housing assistance received by children between the ages of 10 and 16 at some point during the period 1968-1982 on four outcomes experienced in adulthood: (1) welfare receipt between ages 20-27; (2) earnings above poverty between ages 25-27; (3) total earnings between 25-27; and (4) educational attainment at age 27. The impacts of public housing and privately owned assisted housing built or rehabilitated using federal government subsidies were studied using information from the Panel Study of Assisted Housing Database. The most significant finding is that public housing does not have detrimental effects on the long-term self-sufficiency outcomes of youth. The worse outcomes experienced by children who spend some time in public housing when compared to those who did not have assisted housing experience were a result of differences in family background, not housing assistance. There was some evidence that public housing may have positive effects on a child's long-term self-sufficiency, and there was also some evidence that public housing has a stronger positive effect on the most disadvantaged children. Housing assistance appears to have no effect on high school graduation, but it is associated with a 12 percentage point increase in the probability of a youth having some postsecondary education. Six appendixes discuss methodologies and some aspects of public housing impact. (Contains 40 tables and 39 references.)