This paper reports the results of a June 1980 survey of 1069 children in Changsha, Hunan Province. The data have been unavailable previously either in Chinese or in English. In general, they suggest that comparisons of single children with children from multiple-child families in China regarding quality of life, intellectual development, and behavioural traits are similar to comparisons conducted in the United States and other western countries. As in many western studies, single children in China appear to have a better quality of life than children with siblings. Regarding intellectual development, single children in China perform better than those with siblings, a finding which is consonant with the family intactness model of Falbo. Single children in Changsha are little different from ones from multiple-child families on various aspects of behaviour, and are more co-operative and less hostile. These findings are the opposite of those of the Shanghai study, the other major analysis of single children in China; the Shanghai survey indicated that single children were not as well-behaved as those with siblings, a finding that caused some concern among Chinese social scientists. To the extent that the findings of the Changsha study, and not those of the Shanghai study, reflect the situation of single children in China, this could mean that the one-child family planning campaign may not be having a negative impact on children's behaviour.

Some initial results from the recently conducted Northern Ireland Fertility Survey are examined with particular reference to the relationship between family size and religious denomination. While the overall average family size of Roman Catholics is still larger than that of non-Catholics, the extent of this differential is now narrowing as a result of the more rapid recent decline in the average size of Catholic families. In addition, there are variations in family size among the main Protestant denominations; a broad regional dimension to the Catholic-non-Catholic differential is also apparent. Although subsequent analyses will document these trends in greater detail, some of the main hypothesized explanatory variables are briefly discussed along with some of the socioeconomic and political implications of these recent trends.

The paper examines the relationship between infant mortality and a complex measure of socioeconomic status for evidence of diminution. In data on counties in the United States with a minimum of 20 infant deaths over the 5-year period 1971–75, no evidence of a declining relationship between socioeconomic status and infant mortality was found. Both level of community affluence and racial composition of the population exerted direct effects on levels of infant deaths. In addition, both socioeconomic status and racial composition exhibited indirect effects which operated through teenage childbearing. When total infant mortality was subdivided, teenage fertility serves as a mediating variable in the link between socioeconomic status and neonatal mortality, but not for the postneonatal components. Given the nearly equivalent total effect of socioeconomic status on infant mortality, it is concluded that the classic division into neonatal (supposedly a function of biological and genetic agents) and postneonatal (traditionally attributed to social and environmental agents), may be too crude to allow the contemporary effects of the socioenvironmental milieu to be evaluated effectively.

The analysis based on data collected as a part of the World Fertility Survey programme in four Muslim populations—Bangladesh, Java, Jordan and Pakistan—did not show a consistent pattern in rural–urban differentials in marital fertility. While no significant differential in current fertility by place of current residence is noticeable in Bangladesh and Pakistan, urban women in Jordan showed lower fertility than their rural counterparts. Cumulative fertility, when controlled for duration of marriage, was found to be higher in urban than in rural areas of Bangladesh and Pakistan, but no clear pattern emerged in Jordan. In Java, both current and cumulative fertility were higher in urban than in rural areas; urban women who had spent their childhood and were brought up in the urban environment showed, in most instances, higher fertility than the other residence groups.

Shortcomings of the illegitimacy ratio as an index of the level of non-marital childbearing in New Zealand are exposed. Trends in the level of bridal pregnancy are analysed in terms of changes in age-specific probabilities of conceiving a child outside marriage, of ‘regularizing’ such a pregnancy before confinement, and of marrying when non-pregnant. Finally, trends in childbearing resulting from non-marital pregnancies are examined using an index which allows all relevant pregnancies to be related to a single population at risk, and which can be partitioned according to the eventual status of confinements as marital or non-marital. A substantial decline in such childbearing during the 1970s is established and attributed mainly to greater use of abortion. Marital births resulting from non-marital conceptions declined especially sharply.

This study, based on the Nepal Contraceptive Prevalence Survey carried out in 1981, is the first of its kind. Analysis using a logit-linear model showed that the prevalence of current contraception was directly related to number and sex of living children, and the age of the woman. The prevalence rates are higher among women who did not want more children and women who had discussed family size with their husbands. The prevalence varies according to women's education and work-status. Urban women have a higher prevalence than rural women. Women who have access to the family planning service within a short distance have higher prevalence than those who do not.

Among obstetric patients with at least one previous pregnancy, over 20% reported having at least one induced abortion. Abortion experience was more common among women at lower gravidities and among women with the highest levels of education, suggesting that abortion is most used to delay the first birth, particularly for young women still at school. This is in contrast to the situation in Latin America where abortion is used most often to limit family size.

The proportion of women who reported that they used contraception prior to the pregnancy was low, suggesting that knowledge of attitudes towards and availability of family planning services needs to be improved.

Skin colour is measured at the inner upper arm and forehead by reflectance spectrophotometry in 310 Punjabi Hindu spouse pairs. It suggests genetic similarity of the two subcastes Khatri and Arora, of Punjabi Hindus, and that caste formation is essentially a social phenomenon. There is evidence of positive assortative mating with respect to skin colour.

Heights of couples of arranged marriages in Islamabad, Pakistan, were measured. There is an overall significant correlation, and this correlation is maintained when the data are subdivided according to various classifications, e.g. social class. Some hypotheses are put forward to explain the correlations.

Official abortion statistics for South Australia for the years 1977–81 were examined and compared with those for 1970–76 reported earlier. The period 1970–81 represents the first 12 years' experience of legalized abortion in South Australia. A consistent increase in the incidence of abortion was noted, both in absolute numbers and in proportion to the number of live births. South Australia continued to experience lower fertility than other Australian states, although this would have been higher than in other states had it not been for the legalization of abortion. More of the younger and the unmarried women were obtaining abortions, indicating that they were increasingly using abortion as a form of birth control.

Data from 723 families tested for ocular refraction, measures of cognitive ability and school achievement, and measures of school-related nearwork activity were analysed, to examine the association of nearwork and intellectual ability with the development of myopia. The basis of the tests was detection of heterogeneity of standardized regression coefficients, derived from the regression of spherical refraction on age, between scaled nearwork or achievement measures. The results did not provide any evidence in support of the hypothesis that nearwork influences myopia but did confirm a relationship between school grades and myopia.

Two 10-year marriage cohorts from two surveys of married women in Melbourne were compared on their timing of the first and second births. The results showed that women who were married in the early 1970s were much more likely to delay their first birth until about the third or fourth year of marriage compared with women who married in the 1960s. However, there was no difference in the timing of their second birth in relation to the first birth between the two marriage cohorts. Women who delayed childbearing also preferred smaller families. Economic reasons were most frequently mentioned for delaying childbearing.