Suchergebnisse

Book reviewed:Jose Alvarado and John Creedy, Population Ageing, Migration and SocialExpenditure

Wide diversity exists in the mortality experience of different birthplace groups in Australia, and this also occurs with respect to their cause of death profiles. Most migrant groups experience lower mortality in Australia than in their country of origin, and most experience lower mortality than the Australian-born population. In the latter case the main expectations are the Scots, Irish, Poles, South Pacific Islanders, Scandinavian men and North American women. Exceptionally high levels of survival occur among Greeks and Italians in Australia. The lower risk of mortality from heart disease is a principal reason for the deficit between observed and expected deaths of most migrant groups in Australia.

SummaryBecause of the widely held view that a family size of less than two children is undesirable, this paper investigates the extent to which medical conditions occur among one-child and childless families and influence ultimate family size. A partial solution to the inability to have more than one child is adoption, and the extent to which couples use adoption to attain the desired family size is discussed.Regardless of whether or not family size is directly affected, medical factors represent a form of crisis in the lives of women concerned, and thus the incidence rates themselves are of interest. The data suggest that more than one-half of women in Australia experience such a crisis during their childbearing history.

SummaryThe first part of the paper traces changes in the length of the childbearing period and ages of women at the time of their first and last births among women in Australia married between 1905–09 and 1965–69. The source of information was survey data concerning the respondents themselves (once married, currently married women aged under 60 years at 1971) and information that they gave concerning their mothers' childbearing experience. The main observations are that the trend towards smaller families was more marked among the mothers and that the change in the size distribution of families was the major factor in reducing the length of the childbearing period for marriages occurring up to the Second World War, while closer spacing of children was the major factor since then. The second part of the paper examines more detailed supplementary information about the respondents, including changes in the dispersion of the timing of births, the rapid rate of childbearing among the 1955–59 marriage cohort, reasons for delaying the first birth, and differences in behaviour according to education and religion. The discussion raises the question of the rationality of the trend towards closer spacing of children, with special reference to the interaction between a woman's work role and family role.