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Biomedical subjects

P Cutright

Publications and source records attributed to P Cutright.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Thinking about change in illegitimacy ratios: United States, 1963-1983.

What has been the recent trend in illegitimacy in the United States? The answer depends on what is being measured. If the focus is on illegitimacy rates, then the trend is mixed. Illegitimacy ratios, however, have been skyrocketing. We show that this is primarily the result of declining nuptiality (and rising marital dissolution) and secondarily the result of decreases in marital fertility. We argue that the illegitimacy ratio is the better index of the social consequences of out-of-wedlock childbearing and that the high ratios of recent decades are unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future.

Adolescent

The threshold hypothesis: evidence from less developed Latin American countries, 1950 to 1980.

Historical research among European countries finds large differences in the level of social, economic or demographic development among countries, or regions within countries at the time marital fertility rates began their decline from traditional high levels. This research tests a threshold hypothesis which holds that fertility will decline from traditional high levels if threshold levels of life expectancy and literacy are surpassed. Using a pooled regression analysis of 1950, 1960, 1970 and 1980 crude births rates (CBRs) in 20 less developed Latin American countries, in conjunction with 10-year lagged measures of social, economic and family planning program development, analyses reveal statistically significant effects of passing Beaver's (1975) threshold levels of 1950 literacy, or 1950 life expectancy, that are independent of levels of lagged literacy (or lagged life expectancy), economic and family planning program development, as well as measures that control period effects.

Birth Rate

Models of illegitmacy: United States, 1969.

Three theoretical perspectives on illegitimacy, the anomic, the subgroup, and the demographic, are reviewed and compared. A composite causal model is then developed and estimated using areal data derived from the 1970 U.S. Census. While theoretical nonspecificity disallowed a definitive test, all three perspectives yielded valuable insight into the complex mechanisms underlying illegitimacy rates. Results indicate that variation in illegitimacy rates is systematically related to variation in social structure and that integration of the three positions should prove useful to further research.

Adolescent

Intermediate determinants of racial differences in 1980 U.S. nonmarital fertility rates.

There are four major determinants of racial differences in nonmarital fertility rates in the U.S.: differential sexual activity (exposure to risk); differential in spontaneous and induced abortion; differential contraceptive use (including method efficacy); and differential legitimation, through marriage, of births conceived out of wedlock. Racial differences in all four indicators encourage higher black than white nonmarital fertility rates in every age-group examined; however, the relative contribution of each determinant to differences in nonmarital fertility varies according to age. The gap between whites and blacks in contraceptive use is of greatest concern to policy-makers, because family planning effectiveness can, at least theoretically, be changed by program effort. However, even if black women and white women had equivalent levels of contraceptive use, sexual activity and recourse to abortion, there would still be substantial racial differences in nonmarital fertility rates because of the greater propensity among whites to legitimate premaritally conceived births.

Abortion, Induced