Week 12: Discussion Questions

Brien, Lillard, and Waite (1999)

1. The discussion of the models used in this paper is a bit over my head (maybe yours too?). Let's discuss the models and what they can tell us about family formation processes.

2. What is a spline?

3. Why do they use waiting time as the outcome variable?

4. What are some of the differences in hazards of union formations between Blacks and Whites? What does the overall nature of these differences tell us about family formation processes for Blacks and Whites?

5. What are some possible unobserved variables that could be linking these family formation processes?

6. How does this paper help us think about life course? Let us review (or brainstorm) what it means by life course in the sociological literature and how people empirically study the life course.

Geronimus and Korenman (1992)

1. What is the major contribution of this paper? What have they accomplished and what have they not, in making inferences of the causal effect of teenage childbearing on socioeconomic consequences?

2. The authors acknowledge the potential intrafamily heterogeneity. How can this sort of heterogeneity be addressed empirically? What are the methodological chanllenges to be overcome if we attempt to deal with the intrafamily heterogeneity?

3. What are the take-home lessons from this article regarding longitudinal versus cross-sectional analyses? Do you think longitudinal data are always superior to cross-sectional data? Why and why not?

4. To be qualified for inclusion in the within-family analyses, there need to be one sister giving birth at teenage and another at an older age, on top of the condition of having at least two sisters. How might this sample selection affect their empirical findings? Are there alternatives to this approach?

Lillard et al. (1995)

1. What are selection biases, endogeneity, and unobserved heterogeneity? Give examples where arguments are made using these jargons? What is Lillard's solution to such argument pertaining to the relationship between cohabitation and divorce? How about that in the Brien et al. article?

2. Compare the articles we previously read on cohabitation and divorce, what are the theoretical insights we gain from reading this current analysis applying a fancy statistical model? How can we tackle these issues without resorting to sophisticated modeling strategy?

3. Let's chat about the pros and cons of discrete time versus continuous time hazard regression models, and perhaps Cox model as a separate category.

Watkins, Menken, and Bongaarts (1987)

1. Why do W,M&B emphasize the analysis of changing family roles over "households?"

2. Why do the authors use a simulation exercise to study the relationships between different demographic regimes and changes in family roles? What are the advantages and disadvantages of simulations? What are some other approaches they could have taken?

3. What are the problems and pitfalls of applying period data to the study of cohorts. To what extent do these problems affect the results of this paper?

4. Which results were consistent with mortality decline from 1800 to 1980? Which findings were anomalous?

5. The authors use highly aggregated data for this simulation exercise. Where could we expect to see a lot of variation in the "real world?"

6. W,M&B have shown that the number of years of dependency burden has increased over time. How might dependency burden of children and the elderly be qualitatively different when comparing different time periods?

7. Cohabitation and non-marital child bearing are omitted from these simulation models. How might the results differ if the authors had added cohabitation and allowed for non-marital fertility. Are you satisfied with how these issues were handled in the paper?

8. Does this article prove the necessity of demographic perspective to family scholars? How might certain conventional wisdom of the family become questionable when its demographic foundations are ignored? What are the methodological implications for empirical researchers?