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Do Egalitarian Societies Boost Fertility?
No full textIn general, the spreading of egalitarian family values has often been associated with adecline in fertility. However, recently a rebound in fertility has been observed in severalindustrialized countries. A possible explanation of this trend may be the spread ofegalitarian values that induced institutional changes - such as expansion of child carefacilities and father leave – fostering the combination of parenthood and the egalitarianlifestyle. In our paper we build up a formal model to study the diffusion from traditional toegalitarian gender-behavior and its impact on fertility. We find that the long-rundevelopment of the total fertility within a population not only depends on the pace ofdiffusion of egalitarianism and the extent to which social interactions affect theegalitarians’ birth rates, but also on the initial number of traditionalists and egalitarians.We show under which conditions a fertility decline is followed by a subsequent recovery
Influence of Older Generation’s Fertility Behaviours on Daughter’s Desired Family Size in Bihar, India
No full textThis paper investigates the associations between preferred family size of married women aged 16-34 in rural Bihar (India) and the fertility behaviours of their biological mother and mother-in-law. This information is based on scheduled interviews of 450 pairs of index women (i.e. women central in our analysis) and their mother-in-laws conducted in 2011. Preferred family size is first measured by Coombs scale, allowing us to capture latent desired number of children, and then categorized into three categories (low, medium, and high). Ordered logistic regression is employed to estimate the preferred family size of index women. We find that family size preferences of index woman is not associated with mother's fertility but with mother's education. Mother-in-law's desired number of grandchildren is positively associated with preferred family size of index woman and remains significant even after controlling for relevant socioeconomic characteristics. However, in the case where index woman has higher education than her mother-in-law, her gets smaller. This suggests that education may provide women with greater autonomy in their decision making on childbearing
Estimating the time-dependent contact rate of SIR and SEIR models in mathematical epidemiology using physics-informed neural networks. ETNA - Electronic Transactions on Numerical Analysis
No full textThe course of an epidemic can often be successfully described mathematically using compartment models. These models result in a system of ordinary differential equations. Two well-known examples are the SIR and the SEIR models. The transition rates between the different compartments are defined by certain parameters that are specific for the respective virus. Often, these parameters are known from the literature or can be determined using statistics. However, the contact rate or the related effective reproduction number are in general not constant in time and thus cannot easily be determined. Here, a new machine learning approach based on physics-informed neural networks is presented that can learn the contact rate from given data for the dynamical systems given by the SIR and SEIR models. The new method generalizes an already known approach for the identification of constant parameters to the variable or time-dependent case. After introducing the new method, it is tested for synthetic data generated by the numerical solution of SIR and SEIR models. The case of exact and perturbed data is considered. In all cases, the contact rate can be learned very satisfactorily. Finally, the SEIR model in combination with physics-informed neural networks is used to learn the contact rate for COVID-19 data given by the course of the epidemic in Germany. The simulation of the number of infected individuals over the course of the epidemic, using the learned contact rate, shows a very promising accordance with the data
Visualising Migration Flow Data with Circular Plots
No full textEffective visualisations of migration flows can substantially enhance our understandingof underlying patterns and trends. However, commonly used migration maps thatshow place-to-place flows as stroked lines drawn atop a geographic map fall short ofconveying the complexities of human movement in a clear and compelling manner.We introduce circular migration plots, a new method for visualising and exploringmigration flow tables in an intuitively graspable way. Our approach aims to providedetailed quantitative information on the intensities and patterns of migration flowsaround the globe by using a visualization design that is effective and visually appealing.The key elements of the design are (a) the arrangement of origins and destinations ofmigration flows in a circular layout, (b) the scaling of individual flows to allow theentire system to be shown simultaneously, (c) the expression of the volume of movementthrough the width of the flow and its direction through the colour of the origin.Drawing on new estimates of 5-year bilateral migration flows between 196 countries,we demonstrate how to create circular migration plots at regional and country levelsusing three alternative software packages: Circos, R, and the JavaScript library d3.js.Circular migration plots considerably improve our ability to graphically evaluatecomplex patterns and trends in migration flow data, and for communicating migrationresearch to scientists in other disciplines and to the general public. Our visualisationmethod is applicable to other kinds of flow data, including trade and remittances flows
Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer. Akten der Gesellschaft für Griechische und Hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte|(28) Symposion 2019 Akten der Gesellschaft für griechische und hellenistische Rechtsgeschichte Band 28|
No full textUrban Agency and the City Notables of Medieval Anatolia. Medieval Worlds|Urban Agencies: Reframing Anatolian and Caucasian Cities (13th-14th Centuries) & Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean: Changing Perspectives from Late Antiquity to the Long-Twelfth Century, II - Volume 14. 2021 medieval worlds Volume 14. 2021|
No full textScholarship on the city in the Islamic world has generally played down the autonomy and collective agency of cities. This article explores the case of Anatolia, usually neglected in discussions of Islamic urbanism, focusing on the Seljuq period of the 13th century. While much scholarship on Anatolia acknowledges the role of futuwwa (trade-based confraternities somewhat analogous to guilds), I argue the independence of these organisations has been overestimated, for many were closely linked to sultanic power. The paper suggests that in fact power was negotiated between rulers and urban notables (a‘yān), who had considerable autonomy and who brokered binding contracts (sawgandnāmas) with sultans that expressed their rights and obligations. A‘yān played a crucial role in decisions such as the surrender of their cities to conquerors and in negotiating terms, a role for which analogies can be identified elsewhere in the Middle East. Finally, the article makes some preliminary suggestions as to the identities of these a‘yān
Childlessness Trends in Twentieth-Century Europe: Limited Link to Growing Educational Attainment
No full textChildlessness, a driving force of fertility, has undergone strong variations in 20th-centuryEurope, and educational attainment has been rising continuously. We analyse how thesetwo factors were related to each other over time. Our study is based on census and largescalesurvey data from 13 European countries, collected in the Cohort Fertility andEducation database. We compare the trends in the share of women childless at age 40+ inthe 1916–1965 birth cohorts, by level of education. The results suggest that the changes inthe educational composition of the population were only marginally related to the overallvariation in childlessness rates. With time, the positive educational gradient inchildlessness usually decreased: the differences between women of medium/high educationand low educated women diminished. However, the childlessness ratio between highly andmedium educated women remained stable in Western and Southern Europe and evenslightly increased in the East
Low Fertility in Austria and the Czech Republic: Gradual Policy Adjustments
No full textThis article provides a comparative analysis of fertility and family transformations and policyresponses in Austria and the Czech Republic, two neighbouring countries in Central Europethat were until 1989 separated by the “Iron Curtain” that divided two competing political blocsin Europe. Such comparison is partly stimulated by the geographic proximity, shared historyand culture of these two countries in the past and their gradual economic and socialconvergence in the last quarter of century. During this period both societies also grewsurprisingly similar in their fertility and family patterns and main family policy trends.Fertility in both countries is relatively low, but not extremely low when compared with thecountries of Southern Europe or East Asia, with the period total fertility rate recentlyconverging to 1.45 and cohort fertility rates of the women born in the mid-1970s projected at1.65 (Austria) and 1.8 children per woman (Czech Republic). Austrian fertility rates have beenremarkably stable since the 1980s, while in the Czech Republic fertility had imploded duringthe 1990s, following the political regime change, before it started recovering in the 2000s. Inboth countries childbearing has rapidly shifted to later ages and increasingly has taken placeoutside marriage, with over a half of first births now born to cohabiting couples and singlemothers. Czech women retain considerably lower childlessness, possibly due to thepersistently strong normative support to parenthood in the country. Family policies, relativelygenerous in terms of government expenditures, were until recently dominated by a view thatmothers should stay at home for an extended period with their children, making the return toemployment difficult for women. However, recent policy adjustments in both countries haveexpanded the range of options available to parents, making the parental leave more flexibleand, in the case of Austria, gradually expanding public childcare and supporting a strongerinvolvement of men in childrearing
