Ideational Influences on Marriage and Childbearing

说明（由申请人提供）：这是一份调查观念因素对家庭生活影响的申请书。近年来，学者们发现许多信仰和价值观对婚姻和生殖行为有重要影响，这些观念因素已成为家庭和人口变化理论的重要因素。拟议的项目将调查这些观念因素对婚姻和生育的相互影响。我们还将研究这些观念因素如何与影响婚姻、避孕药具使用和生育的广泛的社会经济结构因素交叉。这项研究将在尼泊尔进行，这为研究观念对婚姻和生育的影响提供了一个特别有用的环境。我们关于观念因素对家庭和人口行为影响的研究有五个具体目标。首先，我们将研究观念因素如何影响婚姻行为，主要集中在过渡到第一次婚姻联盟。其次，我们将研究观念因素如何与社会经济结构交叉影响婚姻的进入。第三，我们将研究观念因素如何影响生育，同时考虑到生育和避孕的使用。第四，我们将研究思想、社会和经济结构相互交叉并结合起来影响避孕和生育的方式。第五，我们将研究这些观念影响如何随性别和年龄而变化，并将研究生育决策中的夫妻动态。我们将通过修改和扩大奇旺谷家庭研究（CVFS）来实现这些目标，该研究已经包含了关于个人、家庭和社区层面的社会经济因素的广泛信息。我们将首先收集新的社会经济信息和一套广泛的概念指标，并每六个月更新这些概念指标。我们还将收集第一年访谈后所有月份的家庭和人口统计事件数据。然后，我们将使用我们的观念和结构因素的措施来预测随后的婚姻，避孕和生育。利用已有的面板数据、一波新的信仰和价值观测量方法、定期更新这些信仰和价值观的变化以及每月有关婚姻和生育的信息，我们将调查价值观和信仰的各个维度对随后的婚姻和生育行为的影响方式。我们还将研究这些观念因素如何与影响婚姻和生育的社会经济结构相结合。我们将使用最先进的分析技术来研究这个概念结构模型。因此，本研究将对婚姻和生育行为及其影响因素产生许多新的见解。与公共卫生的关系：众所周知，结婚时间、生育时间、避孕药具的使用和家庭总规模都会对家庭和儿童的健康和福祉产生广泛的影响。理论声称，观念的变化和变异与家庭形成过程中这些关键维度的变化和变异密切相关，但几乎没有经验证据来验证这些理论，也没有证据表明哪些观念重要。我们建议进行新的研究，以创造检验这些理论所需的经验数据，并提供理解观念对家庭形成过程的影响所需的关键测试。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is an application to investigate the influence of ideational factors on family life. In recent years scholars have identified many beliefs and values to be important influences on marriage and reproductive behavior, and these ideational factors have become important elements in theories of family and demographic change. The proposed project will investigate the interrelated influence of these ideational factors on both nuptiality and fertility. We will also examine how these ideational factors intersect with a wide range of socioeconomic structural factors in influencing marriage, contraceptive use, and childbearing. This research will be conducted in Nepal, which provides a particularly useful setting for studying ideational influences on nuptiality and fertility. Our research concerning the influence of ideational factors on family and demographic behavior has five specific aims. First, we will examine how ideational factors influence marriage behavior, focusing primarily on the transition into first marital union. Second, we will investigate how ideational factors intersect with socioeconomic structures to influence entrance into marriage. Third, we will study how ideational factors influence fertility, considering both childbearing and the use of contraception. Fourth, we will examine the ways in which ideational, social, and economic structures intersect and combine to influence contraception and childbearing. Fifth, we will examine how these ideational influences vary by both gender and age and will examine husband-wife dynamics in fertility decisions. We will achieve these goals by modifying and expanding the Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS), which already contains extensive information concerning socioeconomic factors measured at the individual, family, and community levels. We will begin by collecting new socioeconomic information and an extensive set of ideational measures and update these ideational measures every six months. We will also collect data about family and demographic events for all months subsequent to the year one interview. We will then use our measures of ideational and structural factors to predict subsequent marriage, contraception, and childbearing. With the pre-existing panel data, a wave of new measures of beliefs and values, regular updates of changes in those beliefs and values, and monthly information about marriage and childbearing, we will investigate the ways in which various dimensions of values and beliefs influence subsequent marriage and childbearing behaviors. We will also study how these ideational factors combine with socioeconomic structures in affecting marriage and childbearing. We will investigate this ideational-structural model using the most advanced analytic techniques available. This study will, thus, produce many new insights into marriage and childbearing behaviors and the forces influencing them. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Timing of marriage, timing of childbearing, contraceptive use and total family size are all known to have wide ranging consequences for the health and well being of families and children. Theories claim that change and variation in ideas are closely associated with change and variation in these key dimensions of family formation processes, but there is little empirical evidence to verify these theories or to say which ideas matter. We propose new research to create the empirical data needed to test these theories and to provide the key tests needed to understand the influence of ideas on family formation processes.