This paper, using data from the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey and a range of time-varying district-level contextual information derived from the 1986 and 1996 censuses of Iran, applies a discrete time hazard model to study ethnic differences in women’s transition to first marriage. The model specification accounts for both spatial and temporal changes in the socio-economic context of ...

Humans are quite unusual compared to other great apes in that reproduction typically takes place within long-term, iteroparous pairings--social arrangements that have been culturally reified as the institution of marriage. With respect to male behaviour, explanations of marriage fall into two major schools of thought. One holds that marriage facilitates a sexual division of labour and paternal ...

I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation (N = 16,756) to measure trends in marital dissolution rates for U.S. women by education level. In marriage cohorts from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, marital dissolution rates fell among women with a 4year college degree or more, but remained high among women with less than a 4-year college degree. This diverging trend began in the mid-1970s an...

This article provides the first detailed account of recent fertility trends in Iraq, with a particular focus on the changes resulting from the 2003-2011 war and the factors underlying them. The study is based on retrospective birth history data from the 2006 and 2011 Iraq Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (I-MICS). Estimates from the two surveys indicate that total fertility remained stable fr...

This paper presents a hierarchical discrete-time survival model for the analysis of data on timing of marriage. The data were collected as part of the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices in Health (MKAPH) survey for Malawi held in 1996. The model assesses the determinants of transition to marriage and accounts for family and community random effects with cross-level correlation structure. A non...

In this issue of the Journal, Dupre et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2009;170(5):546–555) use data from a nationally representative cohort of older US adults to examine the association of current marital status, timing of first marriage, number and kind of transitions out of marriage, and durations spent in various marital statuses with the risk of all-cause mortality. Their study offers a wealth of emp...

Research has extensively examined matching on race and other characteristics in cohabitation and marriage, but it has generally disregarded sexual and romantic relationships. Using data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the tempo of key transitions in the recent relationships of young adults aged 18 to 24. We focu...

In this issue of the Journal, Dupre et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2009;170(5):546-555) use data from a nationally representative cohort of older US adults to examine the association of current marital status, timing of first marriage, number and kind of transitions out of marriage, and durations spent in various marital statuses with the risk of all-cause mortality. Their study offers a wealth of emp...