Religion, nationalism and demography: False consciousness, real consequences.
Jon Anson and Ofra Anson
Ben Gurion University of the Negev
We may treat religion as an immanent belief system which directly guides human action, or as a social phenomenon in which the actual content of the belief is contingent. The first course leads into a series of contradictions: neither the beliefs nor their consequences are
consistent, nor eternal over time. As social phenomena, however, religions differ from nationalisms only in the referent of their expressed belief: an other-worldly sacred being or a this-worldly sacred community, and the two are often conflated. As the world becomes more integrated through the global economy, the religious - national sentiment becomes the vehicle for a local response. If in the past men killed and died for their gods, today they do so for their homeland.
Demographic events, childbirth, death and migration, may similarly be treated as individual events or as social phenomena subject to group, and not just individual, control, processes which continuously recreate and reproduce not only the social group but also the interrelations between groups. In this presentation we consider the relations between these two sets of social phenomena, religion and nationalism on one hand, demographic processes on the other, and the contradictions inherent in ignoring the social element in the
explanation of their interrelationship. We go on to suggest a mode of explanation that treats demographic phenomena as an element in the interrelations between social groups in their struggle for the distribution of resources.
Email: anson@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
Migration and minority language use: French Caribbeans in metropolitan France.
Stephanie Condon
Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques
For the last two decades, much of the increase in the French Caribbean population has taken place outside Martinique and Guadeloupe through the settlement of thousands of Caribbean migrants in the French metropole. It is thus that some refer to the Caribbean population of the metropolitan France as "the third island". Does the cultural dynamism of the population in metropolitan France extend to the use of Creole in the home? The Family History Study (Etude de l'histoire familiale, Insee, 1999) provides the opportunity of studying the transmission of languages other than French to children and to analyse the various types of transmission according to generation, social origin, education level and family form. The specific role of women in transmission is examined. The possibility of giving more than one language in the answer to the questions has allowed us to nuance the decline of Creole announced in previous surveys in France. Although it is rarely passed on to children as a first mother tongue, it is frequently a second language in the home. In addition, a question on the wish to return to live in one's country of origin has enabled us to show the relationship between transmission of Creole and expressed desires to return to the Caribbean. Interpretation of the results of the Insee survey is strengthened by the use of findings from in-depth interviews conducted both with people who migrated as adults and metropolitan-born people of Caribbean origin.
Email: condon@ined.fr
Degrees of separation: Religious and ethnic mixing in families and neighbourhoods
David Voas
CCSR, University of Manchester
Social scientists have long been interested in the extent to which members of different religious or ethnic groups live together or apart. Such mixing (or concentration) can be found at various levels, from intimate partnerships to residential neighbourhoods to entire regions or area types. This presentation offers a few snapshots of religio-ethnic integration and segregation in England and Wales based on the Household Sample of Anonymised Records and aggregate census data analysed in conjunction with the Index of Multiple Deprivation and the National Statistics 2001 Area Classification. The picture that emerges is paradoxical: many families are mixed, but an even greater degree of mixing at neighbourhood level still looks like segregation.
Email: voas@man.ac.uk
Father figures, teenage pregnancy and the educational outcomes of orphans in South Africa
Ian M. Timæus and Tania Boler
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Limited evidence exists from Africa on how parental death affects child welfare and the effectiveness of possible strategies to mitigate impact. Data are analysed on 1446 school-age children from the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study, a panel of households in South Africa surveyed in 1993, 1998 and 2004.
More than a third of children aged 7-20 in our study are orphans; 22% have a dead father, 7% a dead mother, and 6% have lost both their parents.
Death of a parent more than doubles the risk of late enrolment in school.
Paternal death is significantly associated for girls with late or non-completion of primary school (odds ratio =3.8), grade repetition (odds ratio = 2.7), and dropout (odds ratio =2.4); and for teenage boys with poor attendance (odds ratio = 3.4).
The poor outcomes of paternal orphans persist when controlling for the poverty and other characteristics of the household before the father's death. Important mechanisms include difficulties with meeting the costs of schooling and higher levels of teenage pregnancy.
Cash grants improve educational outcomes in poor households but do not offset the specific adverse effects of orphanhood.
Death of fathers adversely affects children's educational outcomes especially those of daughters. Cash grants reduce the educational disadvantage of poor children but more comprehensive policies are required to address the multi-dimensional impacts of orphanhood. The education of maternal orphans may also suffer but any such impacts must be quite small as they were not evident in our analysis.
Email: ian.timaeus@lshtm.ac.uk
Measuring women's work in developing countries.
Ray Langsten1, Rania Salem2
1American University in Cairo, 2Princeton University
In this paper we contrast two approaches to the measurement of women's work applied to the same population of ever-married women. These women were interviewed on two separate occasions - first during the 2003 Interim Egypt DHS, and again during the Slow Fertility Transition (SFT) survey conducted in 2004. The DHS uses a standard keyword question to measure work, while the SFT employs an activities list question format. We argue that the widely-used keyword approaches to measuring women's work underestimate the level of female labour force activity, as shown by the DHS-SFT comparison and supported by analysis of data from the 1998 Egyptian Labour Market Survey. We demonstrate that the activities list approach captures a wider range of economic activities among women, while allowing us to document multiple jobs held simultaneously by respondents. Furthermore, we find that keyword questions disproportionately exclude poor and poorly educated working women from the labour force. Survey approaches to the measurement of women's work must be revised if we are to fully account for women's contributions to family welfare and national accounts, and if we are to understand the relationship of work to other variables and processes of interest to social scientists.
Email: langsten@auceegypt.edu . rsalem@princeton.edu
Impact of demographic pressure on the labour market in urban India.
Nandini Das
International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai
Despite two decades of accelerated industrialization the rapidly increasing urban workforce is not being absorbed into full productive employment.
Population growth seems to be transforming the structure of developing country labour markets from dual sector to tri-sector in nature creating a need for new measures of labour absorption. This third sector of the labour market that has come into existence in is the informal labour market. This paper assesses the change in trend of the level of employment of informal workers, computes the employment elasticity of these workers in the different non-agricultural sectors and explains how the continuous addition to the workforce is creating a burden on the labour market. Further it projects the workforce sub-sectorally.
Some of the findings indicate that the manufacturing, energy and finance sectors have been unable to absorb informal workers over the years. But the community services and trade sectors have shown a high potential to absorb these workers. In 1997 for every female formal worker there were three informal workers, but there followed a drastic reduction of female involvement as informal workers in 2000-2001. For men, there were more males becoming informal workers than formal workers and in 2000-2001 there was a sudden rise in informal labour, with six informal workers to every formal one.
Projections indicate that by 2009-2010 the engagement of informal workers in the manufacturing sector should fall significantly whereas there should be an increase in their engagement in the construction and hotel sector.
Email: nandinimazumdar@yahoo.com
Deriving age-specific fertility rates by ethnic group at the ward level for Bradford: An assessment of six promising strategies.
Lee Williamson
University of Manchester
This paper draws on the author's PhD research on developing strategies for estimating demographic rates for small areas and ethnic groups for use in population projections. Specifically this paper presents and evaluates six strategies for estimating small area fertility rates for ethnic groups in Bradford.
In the UK, at subnational and subdistrict levels there is a growing need for plausible and reliable population projections for efficient planning and resource allocation by Local Authorities. Ideally projections are required with sex and single year of age (SYOA) detail and often according to ethnic group.
The first part of the paper introduces the Bradford fertility data (which can be likened to Hospital Episode Statistics) and the problem presented by the small number of births when broken down by ward and ethnic group.
The second part gives an overview of the strategies through which the Bradford wards may be grouped together to overcome the problem of small numbers when deriving Age Specific Fertility Rates (ASFRs). This starts by simply grouping wards according to the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), then grouping wards by urban-rural measures, then ONS classifications of wards and various commonly-used deprivation indices. These are considered along with cluster analysis undertaken on the wards using a range of Census variables which encompass indicators of different dimensions of deprivation.
The final part considers six sets of ASFRs based on different estimation strategies, assessing their performance against actual births both by ethnic group at ward-level and at the ward-level. The measurement of error presented is the mean average percentage error.
Email: lee.williamson@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Analysing population change of ethnic groups in England and Wales between 1991 and 2001 using a variety of small areas.
Albert Sabater
University of Manchester
Although census output from both 1991 and 2001 provides a detailed account of the population with an ethnic group dimension, and with detail of age and sex, however, analyses of population change for subnational areas are restricted by four major separate issues:
1) Changes in the population definition;
2) Treatment of under-enumeration;
3) Differences in ethnic group categories; and
4) Boundary changes.
This research overcomes these issues. (1) and (2) by making use of complete population estimates derived from the latest 2001 Census results. (3) Taking into account 'best fit' ethnic group categories between 1991 and 2001. (4) Employing proportional allocation with the use of geographical conversion tables.
The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the methods used to harmonise 1991 and 2001 mid-year population estimates with an ethnic breakdown and detail of age and sex.
Email: Albert.Sabater@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Population projections for ethnic groups in London.
Baljit Bains
Greater London Authority
The Greater London Authority produces population projections for ethnic groups in London as part of a larger suite of annual projections. This presentation will highlight the main results for London, how these differ from other estimates and projections and also how the methodology has changed and been adapted for the 2001-based estimates. A discussion will follow on future proposals for improving the modelling process and incorporating new data.
Email: baljit.bains@london.gov.uk