The goal of this dissertation is to contribute in three ways to the literature on son preference and fertility through a comparative perspective. First, I examine the impact of son preference on fertility in China and South Korea compared with the United States. The impact that a female birth has on the likelihood of a woman having another birth is of the most concern: Women who have one or two daughter(s) as previous child(ren) are expected to be more likely to experience the hazard of having a second or a third birth. Second, my dissertation attempts to examine the effects of women’s status on son preference if women’s education reduces son preference. Third, my dissertation examines son preference and fertility in the U.S. Even though the U.S. has never shown son preference regarding sex ratios at birth, recent research has shown this association to exist among poor Hispanics. My dissertation used data from a national sample, 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. The results showed that women in China and South Korea who had a daughter instead of a son as their first child had a higher hazard of having a second birth as expected. Moreover, the results showed that the hazard ratio of having a third birth for Chinese and South Korean women was almost four and five times more, respectively. As expected, the hazard ratios for the U.S. were not significant and thus did not support the hypothesis. And the more educated women who had a daughter(s) instead of a son(s) as their previous child(ren) were less likely to have a second birth, but not in the third birth. This means women’s education apparently does not reduce son preference in the case of the third birth. Thus, women’s education apparently has limited or no influence on the childbearing decision where son preference is strong. Third, Hispanic women with low socioeconomic status did not have a significant hazard ratio of having a higher order birth. Accordingly, the dissertation does not find any statistical evidence of American son preference at the national level.

The goal of this dissertation is to contribute in three ways to the literature on son preference and fertility through a comparative perspective. First, I examine the impact of son preference on fertility in China and South Korea compared with the United States. The impact that a female birth has on the likelihood of a woman having another birth is of the most concern: Women who have one or two daughter(s) as previous child(ren) are expected to be more likely to experience the hazard of having a second or a third birth. Second, my dissertation attempts to examine the effects of women’s status on son preference if women’s education reduces son preference. Third, my dissertation examines son preference and fertility in the U.S. Even though the U.S. has never shown son preference regarding sex ratios at birth, recent research has shown this association to exist among poor Hispanics. My dissertation used data from a national sample, 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. The results showed that women in China and South Korea who had a daughter instead of a son as their first child had a higher hazard of having a second birth as expected. Moreover, the results showed that the hazard ratio of having a third birth for Chinese and South Korean women was almost four and five times more, respectively. As expected, the hazard ratios for the U.S. were not significant and thus did not support the hypothesis. And the more educated women who had a daughter(s) instead of a son(s) as their previous child(ren) were less likely to have a second birth, but not in the third birth. This means women’s education apparently does not reduce son preference in the case of the third birth. Thus, women’s education apparently has limited or no influence on the childbearing decision where son preference is strong. Third, Hispanic women with low socioeconomic status did not have a significant hazard ratio of having a higher order birth. Accordingly, the dissertation does not find any statistical evidence of American son preference at the national level.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-105). / vi, 105 leaves, bound ill. (some col.), col. maps 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Rolla, 2007. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Accompanying "this dissertation is a CD-ROM, which contains site amplification and seismic hazard results for each grid point (1974 points) considered in the study. The results have prepared as .txt files. The CD-ROM also contains the maps generated from these estimated results. The maps are prepared as .png files." Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed January 28, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-269).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 208-225) Also available in print.

Thesis (M.E.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2008. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references. Also available via the World Wide Web.

No description available.

An accurate seismic hazard assessment can only be carried out if a homogeneous and sufficiently complete catalogue for the study area is available. Since the catalogue for southern Africa was last updated in the early 1990s for the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP), it is necessary that a new updated, homogeneous and complete earthquake catalogue be compiled that includes data acquired during the last two decades. The process of compiling the new earthquake catalogue for southern Africa (South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia) was done as part of the Global Earthquake Modelling (GEM) project. The data from published and unpublished sources, and databases from the South African National Seismograph Network (SANSN), Bulawayo (BUL), the Geological Survey of Botswana, the National Earthquake Information Centre (NEIC), the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS), and the International Seismic Centre (ISC) were retrieved and evaluated. After the data from the different sources were merged, duplicates and induced earthquakes were removed. The catalogue was unified with all magnitude types converted to moment magnitude (MW). Unifying the southern African catalogue to one magnitude scale had multiple challenges, considering that the catalogue is mostly incomplete, and it was therefore not easy to derive relations between different magnitude scales. The question of which method and relations are most suitable for converting all magnitude scales to MW had to be addressed. To ensure that all the events are independent, several procedures were carried out to decluster the catalogue and most suitable method selected. The final catalogue includes all available events, i.e. historical, and instrumental events from 1690 to December 2011, excluding fore- and aftershocks and induced events. This catalogue has 920 events with MW ≥ 4 whereas GSHAP has only 100 events with MS ≥ 4 in the southern African region. The largest event in the final catalogue occurred in 1952 and is located in the Okavango Delta region in Botswana with magnitude MW = 6.7. The maximum likelihood method was used at each point on a grid covering the study area, to estimate the spatial distribution of the b-value and the activity rate. The maximum curvature method was used for estimating the spatial distribution of magnitude of completeness, which was also substantiated with the Gutenberg-Richter, time-scale and spatial-scale magnitude of completeness graphs.