Chilean 2012 Census Data Called Into Question

A report out today from Chile indicates that an external commission reviewing the 2012 census in Chile has concluded that the results are not reliable, that they should not be used for public policy purposes, and that the census (at least an abbreviated version) should be retaken in 2015. The Commission, whose report (in Spanish) can be viewed here, concluded that there was an unacceptably high overall coverage error (undercount) of 9.3 percent of the population. And in one out of five census areas, the undercount was as high as 20 percent. As you might expect, there are calls for the resignation of the director of the INE (National Statistical Institute). Until new census data are collected, the commission recommended using population projections prepared for the country by CELADE--the Population Division of the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), which is housed in Santiago, Chile.

Grandparents Matter

Those of us who are grandparents are firm believers that we matter, but social scientists in general are only slowly catching on to that idea. Grandparents matter enough when it comes to childcare in the US that the American Community Survey asks a question about that. However, a paper just published in the American Sociological Review suggests that a child's life chances are influenced by grandparents in ways that have tended to be ignored in past research, although their research builds on theories developed by Robert Mare, a past president of the Population Association of America and published in Demography in 2011. The current paper is "The Grandparents Effect in Social Mobility: Evidence from British Birth Cohort Studies," by two British researchers, Tak Wing Chan and Vikki Boliver. The article is not available without a subscription, but the title and the abstract give a good flavor of the argument:

The net grandparents-grandchildren association can be summarized by a single uniform association parameter. Net of parents’ social class, the odds of grandchildren entering the professional-managerial class rather than the unskilled manual class are at least two and a half times better if the grandparents were themselves in professional-managerial rather than unskilled manual-class positions. This grandparents effect in social mobility persists even when parents’ education, income, and wealth are taken into account.

They do add the caveat that these study results might not hold for other societies, and of course there are a lot of things besides grandparental status that influences life chances. But you can't count grandparents out. And, as a parent, keep in mind that you are influencing not only the lives of your children, but of their children as well.

Love's Labour's Lost: Marriage (or not so much) in Korea

At the end of the Korean War in 1953 the average Korean woman was having 6.3 children. Today, it is down to 1.3--one of the lowest in the world. Korea is a classic case of a society becoming rapidly urban, well-educated and modern in economic terms, while remaining very traditional when it comes to the family. As in Japan (which ruled Korea from 1910-1945) women who marry are expected to take care of the children and the elders, both at the same time, leaving little time to maintain a career. Added to this dissonance in the speed of change in family values is the question of how do young people meet a suitable potential mate? This was the topic of a story in today's New York Times.

In a country where arranged courtships are fading into the past, the Ministry of Health and Welfare began promoting the idea of dating parties in 2010. Under the enthusiastic leadership of its minister at the time, Cheon Jae-hee, it held four parties that year that brought together its workers and employees at local corporations — making a splash in the news media. Ms. Cheon officiated at the wedding of the first couple who met at one. Featured in a magazine article before the wedding, the 31-year-old groom-to-be thanked the government profusely and wondered if two children would be enough to meet expectations.

Since then, sponsorship of the parties has shifted mainly to ministry affiliates and local governments, which can win financial rewards for activities that promote marriage and childbirth. The municipal government that threw the party Mr. Park attended has been named a role model by the city of Seoul. One government-financed agency, the Planned Population Federation of Korea, claims a different kind of victory: by hosting parties, it is working to undo its past success when it encouraged vasectomies as a booming South Korea feared being held back by population growth.

In truth, South Korea would have been held back by population growth. It's rapid decline in fertility created a classic demographic dividend which, combined with an increasingly educated population, has produced an economic miracle very similar to China's. But, just as China's young people do not seem too inclined to jump into marriage and raise the birth rate, neither do young Koreans.  In referring to these government-sponsored dating parties, a professor of sociology in Korea notes "that society has not been prepared for such a radical change."

“Approaching or socializing with someone you don’t know at all feels very unfamiliar to Koreans,” she said. “It is very awkward to mingle with someone without knowing who the other person’s parents are, where they are from, etc.”

This explanation reminded me distinctly of the cultural roots of xenophobia--a genuine fear of strangers.

Whither the American Family?

Charles Blow has a column in the New York Times that tries to put some context to the issue of minority--especially African American--families in the US, among whom a majority of children are born out-of-wedlock, despite surveys showing that vast majority of Americans of all racial/ethnic groups believe in marriage. But an important issue limiting the latter is, in Blow's estimation, the vastly higher rates of incarceration among black men.

In the two decades preceding the Great Recession, the American prison population nearly tripled, according to the Pew Center on the States. And make no mistake: mass incarceration rips at the fabric of families and whole communities.

Incarceration rates certainly cannot account for children being born out of wedlock, but it can help account for a lower than preferred overall rate of marriage.

Another, albeit related, perspective on the family came this week from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University.

In 2009, almost two-thirds (64.5%) of children lived with married parents. Although children living in married parent families may experience a wide range of family and household living arrangements, including residing with biological and stepparents, full, half or step siblings, or other related or unrelated household members. The traditional nuclear family consists of two married parents who are both biologically related to all children in the family, and no one else is living in their home. In other words, the child is only living with his or her married biological parents and full siblings. In 2009, half (50.8%) of children in the U.S. were living in a traditional nuclear family. We have witnessed a relatively modest 12% decline over a 13 year period. In 1996, 56% of children were in traditional nuclear families.

So, despite the increase in out-of-wedlock births among almost all groups in the US, it is still the case that nearly two out of three children are living with married parents, even if both parents are not biologically related. Since one of my own children is adopted, I'm not one who thinks that the biological relationship is the most important thing in the world, but having two parents is generally better than just one, for both economic and social reasons. Obviously, the more current or potential husbands/fathers who are in jail, the harder this is going to be.

Lesson About Hispanics From Birthdays in Texas

The Economist's "Lexington" has an interesting column in this week's Economist in which he draws some lessons about the future of America from the spread of the "quinceañera" (a girl's 15th birthday party--sort of a coming out in Mexican tradition) from Hispanics to Anglos. Among his observations is the important one about who in the world are Hispanics, anyways?

Strictly speaking, the Hispanic identity is a bureaucratic creation: the term appeared four decades ago as a box to tick on federal government forms. To this day it obscures the diversity of Americans from Spanish-speaking backgrounds (some of whom can barely speak Spanish). And yet, since that artificial birth, the Hispanic identity has taken on life, uniting the cultures of incomers from Mexico and Latin America to the Caribbean.

According to the Census Bureau, every day 200 Hispanic girls turn 15 in Texas. By the time today’s newborn Texans reach their quinceañeras, that number is projected to hit 300 a day (nationally, the numbers are roughly five times as large). According to a straw poll of party planners, a “normal” Texan quinceañera budget starts at $10,000. The custom is spreading. One of those polled, Eric Silva, says that more than a dozen Anglo, black and Indian-American families have asked for a quinceañerarather than a more typically American Sweet Sixteen party in the past two years—though Anglos don’t spend very much, he sniffs.

The cost of such parties is, like the cost of weddings these days, a bit of a mystery to me. Less mysterious were the origins of such parties, which put girls on display for potential suitors. Thankfully, teenage marriages and motherhood are receding among all ethnic groups in this country, as in Mexico as well.