Special Characteristics of China's Interprovincial Migration

This paper examines interprovincial migration in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during 1982–87 when China was going through economic restructuring. Chinese migration patterns bear some resemblances as well as dissimilarities with those generally observed in Western societies. In China, the age-specific migration rate does not vary much until the preretirement stage. Return to places of origin is obviously the most plausible explanation of Chinese migration patterns. In addition, a clear-cut gender gap exists, higher than that imagined in Western societies. Chinese women appear far behind Chinese men in their propensity to migrate, and the determinants of migration are quite different for Chinese women and Chinese men.     

Women's Empowerment Through Home–based Work: Evidence from India

This article examines the extent to which home–based production in the garment sector of Ahmedabad, India, serves to empower its female participants, defining empowerment in terms of control over enterprise income and decision–making within the household. It places this question within the literatures on resource theory and bargaining models of the household, both of which posit that improved access to resources increases women's power in the household. This study highlights why access to resources may not lead so directly to improvements in women's position in the household in the Indian context. It then discusses why home–based work may be less empowering than sources of work outside of the home. The arguments about the empowerment potential of women's access to resources through home–based work are tested by examining, first, the determinants of control over the income generated by women in home–based garment production and, second, to what extent access to and control over income from this source translates into involvement in decisions which are atypically women's and yet important to their lives. The results provide a better understanding of the potential of home–based work to offer women in urban India a source of economic activity that also can translate into increased intra–household power.     

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF AGE AT FIRST MARRIAGE OF THE ETHNIC TRIBAL WOMEN IN BANGLADESH

This paper examines the socio-economic determinants of age at first marriage of the ethnic tribal women of Bangladesh. Cox proportional hazard regression analysis was applied to the data set containing 792 observations from four different tribal communities compiled on the basis of a household survey. The singulate mean age at marriage (SMAM) of the women, and mean age at first marriage for females, were found to be 21.8 years and 18.9 years, respectively, which were much higher than those at the national level. Findings revealed that woman's educational attainment and pre-marital work status significantly delayed the timing of marriage. Parents’ economic status and respondents’ birth order had the most significant effect on marital timing. The multivariate statistical analyses also identified several variables as important determinants of marriage timing for the tribal women, including ethnic identity, childhood place of residence, father's literacy and father's survival status. The findings of the study may provide a clue to the rising age at first marriage of the disadvantaged indigenous women.     

MARRIAGE MIGRANTS AS EMIGRANTS

This article examines the emigration dimension of marriage migration in Asia by focusing on remittances received by parents from daughters who married and migrated abroad. Based on a study of 250 migrant-sending households in Vietnam with a daughter living in an Asian country as a ‘foreign wife’, the analysis provides empirical evidence that emigrant spouses make substantial financial contributions to their natal families through remittances. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of remittance-sending shows that a woman's characteristics and living conditions abroad largely determine whether or not she remits, while the relative poverty level of her natal family has limited influence. Findings call for a broader conceptualization of ‘women who marry foreigners’ or ‘foreign brides’ as emigrants who contribute to the social development of their sending countries.     

LOGNORMAL EXTRAPOLATION AND INCOME ESTIMATION FOR POOR BLACK FAMILIES*

ABSTRACT. In studies of urban and state income distribution, the estimation of percentile incomes within intervals reported by the Bureau of the Census has often been done under the assumption that incomes are uniformly distributed. This paper shows that income may be significantly underestimated if the assumption is applied to lower-level percentiles in the black family income distribution. Consequently, conclusions about the level and determinants of the relative income of poor black families may be misleading.     

It Doesn't Matter: Some Cautionary Findings About Sex and Representation From School Committee Conversations

One of the most important findings in the field of gender and politics is that women elected officials at the state and national levels do a better job than men of representing the interests of women, children, and families. This paper uses school committees to ask the same question about women elected officials at the local level. Thus the question that guides this paper is: Does it matter for women if women are elected to this local political institution? If it does matter, then we should “hear” women's distinct ways of participating through their discussions at committee meetings. The study finds, in contrast, that in this political institution women and men behave in remarkably similar ways when separated by committee roles, and that women elected officials in this political institution spend very little time addressing issues affecting girls in public education.     

Harsh choices: Chinese women's paid work and unpaid care responsibilities under economic reform

China's economic reforms over the past three decades have dramatically changed the mechanisms for allocating goods and labour in both market and non-market spheres. This article examines the social and economic trends that intensify the pressure on the care economy, and on women in particular in playing their dual roles as care givers and income earners in post-reform China. The analysis sheds light on three critical but neglected issues. How does the reform process reshape the institutional arrangements of care for children and elders? How does the changing care economy affect women's choices between paid work and unpaid care responsibilities? And what are the implications of women's work–family conflicts for the well-being of women and their families? The authors call for a gendered approach to both social and labour market policies, with investments in support of social reproduction services so as to ease the pressures on women.     

Legislator Gender and Legislator Policy Priorities in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and the United States House of Representatives

This paper suggests that the findings of the literature on gender differences in legislator policy priorities in advanced industrial democracies very well may be generalizable to nations in the developing world, particularly those in Latin America. Previous studies of gender differences in legislator policy priorities have been confined to a small number of advanced industrial democracies. These studies have found women legislators to give a higher degree of priority than men to policies in the thematic areas of women's rights and children and families. Employing data on bill introduction, this paper tests for and finds similar gender differences in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and the United States House of Representatives. Significant gender differences were found in both national legislatures in the areas of women's rights and children and families. No significant gender differences were found in other areas widely considered to be of traditional interest to women.     

INTERNATIONAL AIR TRAVEL AND FDI FLOWS: EVIDENCE FROM BARCELONA

This paper provides a bridge between the literature examining the economic impact of air services and the literature analyzing the determinants of bilateral FDI flows. I estimate a gravity equation for the determinants of bilateral FDI flows between the Spanish region of Catalonia, home to the airport of Barcelona, and countries of all over the world for the period 2002–2015. I find evidence that the reduction in travel time due to the availability of nonstop flights scheduled with sufficient frequency increases the amount of FDI due to the enhanced transmission of information.     

中韩国际婚姻的跨国家庭纽带研究——以汉族婚姻移民女性为中心

论文以22名嫁韩中国女性为对象,从跨国主义的视角分析她们在韩的婚姻现状、与原生家庭间的跨国联系及这种联系的性质和意义。研究发现,这些女性绝大多数来自中国东北三省和山东沿海地区;中介婚姻占近70%,且与丈夫的年龄差距普遍较大;再婚者占较大比例。其中,60%与韩国丈夫育有子女,已在韩国生活多年,并从事各种非专业化工作。这些女性通过汇款寄物,信息通讯交流,回国探亲,邀请家人来韩等一系列方式维持着跨国家庭纽带。而她们的中国家人也为其提供育儿、家政以及精神抚慰等多方面的支持。通过跨国家庭纽带,汉族女性与原生家庭成员之间实现的是一种灵活变动着的"跨国看护",双方是互惠互利的。     

Infant mortality in Ottawa, Canada, 1901: assessing cultural, economic and environmental factors

Infant mortality is widely recognized as an indicator of poor living conditions. Scholars have identified economic, housing, environmental, and more recently, cultural determinants of infant mortality. Using individual-level data and record linkage this paper documents and explains the geography of infant mortality in Ottawa in 1901. Infant death in Ottawa mirrored the geography of poor living conditions in the city. The poorest and most densely settled community in Ottawa was Lowertown, a mostly French-Canadian part of the city with a disproportionate share of the city's infant deaths. In addition to environmental factors, infant mortality was linked to economic standing. Poorer families in Lowertown were more likely to have one of their infants die than better off families. After controlling for economic standing, however, cultural factors were stronger predictors of infant deaths. French-Canadian families in Lowertown had a greater risk of infant deaths than did families of other backgrounds irrespective of material circumstances. Supporting conclusions drawn elsewhere, this paper suggests that the interaction of particular cultural practices, such as shorter periods of breast-feeding among French-Canadians and a poor sanitary environment, resulted in high infant mortality rates in Ottawa.     

The Role of Lesser Aristocratic Women in Twelfth-century Yorkshire Society — The Rumilly,Arches, and St Quentin Charters*

This article argues that lesser aristocratic women were an active part of twelfth-century society and that as landholders and alienators they were able to significantly shape and mould local monastic society, family wealth and relationships, and other secular social networks. The influence women could have on these areas was on the material and physical geography of the land as well as on the social relationships. As landholders, women could and did maintain social networks with the ecclesiastical and secular societies. This was, however, limited by the geographic location of their landholding and thus demonstrates a social world that is defined by localities and regions. The three families of Rumilly, Arches and St Quentin provide cases whereby women’s activities can be evidenced in a range of events and actions. They also demonstrate a level of independence in women’s agency that did not rely on their male kin before land alienations or grants could be made. The available charter evidence for the three families studied is also illustrative of the existing charter material that can be identified for lesser aristocratic women and allows the paper to address twelfth-century women outwith the traditionally studied groups of royal and comital women or religious women.     

History lessons for gender equality from the Zambian Copperbelt, 1900–1990

This article explores the historical causes and consequences of gender divisions of labour in the Zambian Copperbelt. Male breadwinner and female housewife stereotypes appear to have emerged as a product of imported Christian ideologies, colonial–capitalist concerns and an economic climate that largely enabled men to financially provide for their families. Reliant upon husbands for status and economic support, many urban women had little conjugal bargaining power. Gender divisions of labour also meant that people lacked first-hand evidence of women’s equal competence in employment and politics, who they thus often underrated and overlooked. Such perceptions seem to have perpetuated women’s exclusion from prestigious positions – a pattern sustained by macro-economic circumstances in the early decades of Independence. Compliance with the gender status inequalities promoted in pre-marital traditional initiation thus became necessary to marital and economic security, as well as respectability, which was not previously the case. While there were exceptions to these trends, the historical record illustrates the interplay between patterns of resource access, internalised gender stereotypes and cultural expectations.     

太行抗日根据地女性婚姻家庭待遇及其冲突

抗战全面爆发之后,随着太行抗日根据地建立、巩固与发展,边区政府颁布了一系列新婚姻法规及其支持性政策,从而使得农村女性婚姻家庭与两性关系呈现出与以往不同的样貌。男女平等思想的倡导提高了妇女在婚姻家庭中的地位、婚姻自由政策的推行解除了妇女在婚姻问题上的痛苦,而频仍发生的家庭纠纷与日益增多的解约离婚案件亦造成了根据地各级政府在婚姻家庭管理上的混乱。尽管新婚姻法令的目标在于根除社会陋习并建立符合新民主主义革命诉求的新型男女关系和婚姻家庭关系,但中共对根据地的婚姻管理不得不立足于法制与现实的平衡之中。     

TWO-EARNER FAMILIES IN THE HOUSING MARKET

The 1970's has been a period in which three trends have coincided: housing prices have been escalating, wives have continued to enter the labor force, and legislation prohibiting discrimination in mortgage markets on the basis of sex and marital status has been enacted. In this paper, we examine the role of the two-earner family–one in which both husband and wife work–in the housing market of the 1970's, and the interrelation of this household type with other factors shaping the current high demand for housing. We also speculate on the role of the two-earner family in the housing market of the 1980's. We conclude that two-earner families are in a position to increase their housing outlays in the future, that the continued growth in the number of two-earner families will add to future housing demand, but that many two-earner families may be divorced couples of the future. This suggests that, while there will be a strong impact on single-family home demand, there will also be some restructuring of demand toward rental housing and cooperative/condominium ownership.     

Transition in second birth intention in a low fertility context: the case of Jiangsu,China

When China’s decades-long one-child policy was replaced by a two-child policy, the circumstances under which women intend to have a second child become of great concern. This study examines the determinants of women’s second birth intention, as well as how the intention changes over time alongside changes in other life circumstances. Using panel data from the Jiangsu Fertility Intention and Behaviour Study (JFIBS, 2007, 2010), we find that women with more economic and familial/social resources are more likely to want a second child, while women who work in non-agriculture sectors and have higher decision-making power in the family are less inclined to have a second child. We also find that a sizeable increase of family income encourages women to upwardly revise their intention towards a desire for two children. The role of policy change on Chinese women’s second birth intention is also discussed.     

允许与严禁:闽粤地方对妇女出洋的反应(1860-1949年)

近代中国出洋妇女 90 %来自闽粤地区 ,其中又以广府妇女、闽南妇女为最多 ,其次为客家妇女和潮汕妇女 ,而以海南妇女为最少。闽粤妇女移民模式可分为三种 :依附型迁移、被动型迁移和主动型迁移。所谓依附型移民是指随着丈夫和家人迁移的妇女 ,被动型移民是指违背本人意愿、被拐卖出国的妇女 ,主动型移民则是自愿出洋谋生或留学的妇女。闽粤地方政府、地方士绅、宗族和家庭对不同身份妇女出洋反应不一 ,并采取了不同的防范措施 ,从中我们可以看到 ,在不同伦理观念和经济利益的趋动下 ,闽粤地方对妇女出洋的推动或限制。     

Left-behind and Vulnerable? Conceptualising Development and Older Women’s Agency in Rural China

Abstract:

Concern has been growing recently in China about the well-being of children, women and the elderly “left behind” on the farm when family members leave the village in search of waged work. Increasingly, the left-behind are portrayed in academic and policy discourse as a “vulnerable group” of passive dependants, sidelined by modernisation and abandoned by their families. This paper challenges this discourse, arguing that while attention to the well-being of the left-behind is vital, there is an urgent need for a shift in focus from their vulnerability to their agency. The paper focuses on the agency of left-behind women between the ages of 50 and 80. It aims, first of all, to point the way toward an empirically richer understanding of the social construction of older women’s agency and well-being. The second aim of the paper is to suggest how different conceptualisations of “agency” and “older women” might contribute to more ethical and politically effective strategies for development and the improvement of women’s well-being. To further these two aims, the paper draws on fieldwork conducted in rural Ningxia, north-western China, and on critiques of the “capability approach” to development expounded by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.     

From pioneer migration to family reunification: Polish women’s narratives of lifestyle preferences in Bologna,Italy

In the article I analyse the emergence of lifestyle considerations among former labour migrants and the importance of these new preferences for their choice to settle in the new location. The paper critically engages with the theoretical framework of ‘lifestyle migration’ and discusses its applicability to labour migrants from Central-Eastern Europe settling in Mediterranean countries. I present the interplay between economic and lifestyle reasoning based on two narrative biographical interviews with migrants in Bologna, drawing on my comparative qualitative research in Italy and the UK. The pioneer female migrants went to Italy as care workers in order to fulfill their households’ immediate economic needs. During the years of circular migration the women developed ties to Italy, but found prolonged periods of separation from their families no longer acceptable. The female migrants opted to transfer their whole households to Bologna. Based on the women’s experience and preferences, the families’ consumption preferences and leisure activities transformed in the course of settlement in the Italian city. I claim that lifestyle is a fruitful concept in researching migrants’ changing aspirations, way of life in the new location and the reasons for staying. This approach allows to go beyond the typologies based on the initial motivations for migration.     

Postcrisis recovery in the regions of Europe: Does institutional quality matter?

This paper investigates how institutional quality and its components (quality, impartiality, and control of corruption) are associated with the economic recovery in the aftermath of the global recession (2010–2016). The evidence suggests that the postcrisis dynamism of a region depends on whether its economy is accompanied by a good governance at the local level. The results also show the heterogeneity in the effects of institutional characteristics and other traditional determinants of growth for the high-income club (core) and the low-income club (periphery), respectively. This evidence can provide indications to define ad hoc policies apt to mitigate the recent surge in inequality among EU regions.