General Comprehensive Examination in Demography
Spring 2011
Select and answer one question from section A, B, C and D (4 total).
SECTION A: FAMILY AND FERTILITY
1. As of 2009, 41% of births in the United States are nonmarital, more than ten times the percent in
1940. Describe the factors that have contributed most to the growth in nonmarital fertility in the United
States. In your answer, you might describe differences by race, age, education, and relationship context.
What does this increase, and its demography, suggest about the significance of marriage and
cohabitation today?
2. Imagine that you had a data set for either:
a) a large middle or low-income country such as Brazil or India that consisted of the TFR for
small geographic areas at five different points in time, as well as the level of women’s education,
urbanization and electrification in each of those geographic areas at the different points in time;
or
b) for the counties of the United States at a single point in time that consisted of the TFR and
information on the mean age of childbearing, religious affiliation and attendance at religious
services, the level of women’s education, mean income, proportion in poverty, and how the
county had voted in the last Presidential election.
Choose one of these two settings and data sets, and describe the question(s) you would like to explore,
and how you would proceed to analyze the data. Be sure to explain why the question you have chosen
interests you and the analysis you propose would be of interest to a scholarly audience.
SECTION B: MIGRATION AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
1. In a forthcoming article, Xie and Greenman find that among immigrant children living in poor
neighborhoods, those who have fully assimilated have no poorer educational outcomes than those who
have only partially assimilated. Review segmented assimilation theory and explain how this finding
might or might not support this perspective.
2. A reporter from the NY Times has called you to discuss recent reports from the 2010 Census that
show the South and West accounted for nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population increase over the past
decade whereas the Midwest and Northeast saw only modest gains, with Michigan actually losing
population. Describe how you would explain these trends.
SECTION C: HEALTH AND MORTALITY
1. Population health scholars are interested in understanding both health inequalities within a society at a
particular point in time, in understanding trends over time, and in understanding variation across
countries globally. Are the same factors important for each type of variation? Explain which factors are
likely to be most important for understanding each type of variation and why you think so.
2. Since the Industrial Revolution, life expectancy has improved greatly in many parts of the world. In
Europe, for example, what is known about the causes of this decline? What is still being debated? How
has the mortality decline in less developed countries differed from the decline in places like Europe?
SECTION D. DEMOGRAPHIC METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
1. Life Table question
Spain, Life table (period 5x1), Females, 1939
Year
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
1939
Age
0
1-4
5-9
10-14
15-19
20-24
25-29
30-34
35-39
40-44
45-49
50-54
55-59
60-64
65-69
70-74
75-79
80-84
85-89
90-94
95-99
100-104
105-109
110+
mx
0.13007
0.01953
0.00404
0.00267
0.00396
0.00480
c)
0.00569
0.00597
0.00754
0.00834
0.01255
0.01531
0.02821
0.04024
0.07957
0.10950
0.16046
0.22709
0.28578
0.34726
0.42387
0.50439
0.56969
qx
0.11993
0.07422
0.01995
0.01327
0.01962
0.02373
0.02377
0.02803
0.02941
0.03698
0.04078
e)
0.07361
0.13110
0.18164
0.32518
0.41972
0.55041
0.68149
0.73945
0.83595
0.89159
0.93017
1.00000
ax
a)
1.31
2.13
2.59
2.66
2.54
2.45
2.38
2.46
2.36
2.35
2.36
2.39
2.31
2.32
2.19
2.22
2.15
2.07
1.74
1.90
1.75
1.61
1.76
lx
100000
88007
81475
79850
78790
77244
75411
73619
d)
69451
66883
64155
60258
55823
48504
39694
26786
15543
6988
2226
580
95
10
1
dx
11993
b)
1625
1060
1546
1833
1792
2063
2104
2568
2727
3897
4436
7318
8810
12908
11243
8555
4762
1646
485
85
10
1
Lx
92205
334434
402716
396692
390332
381709
372490
362694
352427
340463
327194
310499
289709
259457
218931
162215
f)
53317
20971
5759
1396
200
19
1
Tx
5178500
5086295
4751861
4349145
3952453
3562121
3180412
2807922
2445228
2092801
1752338
1425144
1114645
824936
565479
346548
184334
81664
28347
h)
1616
220
20
1
ex
51.78
57.79
58.32
54.47
50.16
46.12
42.17
38.14
34.17
30.13
26.20
22.21
18.50
14.78
11.66
8.73
6.88
5.25
g)
3.31
2.79
2.32
1.97
1.76
a-h) Eight numbers from this life table have been removed. Please calculate the missing numbers and
explain how you did the calculation.
i) In this life table, what is the probability that a woman who survives to age 15 will die during the
childbearing years (ages 15-49)?
j) In the stationary population corresponding to this life table, what fraction of the female population age
15-49 is alive five years later?
k) If you were asked to predict how many women age 15-49 there would be in Spain in 1949 in the
absence of migration and assuming no change in mortality, and had just this life table and the actual
1939 distribution of the female population by age, how would you do it? (you don’t need to make the
projection, just to say how you would do it)
2. Answer both parts.
Part One: Explain the concept of life expectancy, and how to calculate this measure from a set of agespecific mortality rates for a particular population in a defined period of time. Next, define the TFR, the
GRR, and the NRR and describe the meaning and usefulness of each measure.
Part two: What is a stationary population? What is a stable population? Suppose that you had a stable
population that was shrinking at 1 percent per year, and in which there was no mortality up until age
69.3, at which point everyone died. Please graph both the age distribution and the l(x) function in the
corresponding life table. What was life expectancy in this population? What would be the levels of the
birth rate and the death rate in this stable population?