Abstract
A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this article, I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the marriage market is flexible even when is confronted with disproportionately large cohorts. If the social pressure toward marriage is strong, the marriage rates do not necessarily fall, but the mating age patterns change.
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Notes
The legal age at marriage for women in Romania is 15. I present here data starting with 1980 because I am interested mainly in the 1967–1969 cohorts’ behavior. 2000 is the last year for which I could get reliable data, because the last census was done in 2002.
I used data from Romanian Demographic Yearbook 2001, which includes data until 2000. In 2000, women born in 1969 were 31 years old, this is why I compared only women age 15–31 years old.
I used moving average and linear interpolation for the distribution of difference. There are 959 cases for generation 1967–1969 and 661 for generation 1964–1966.
I wanted to keep the graphic simple, so here I show only the 1964–1969 cohorts. However, in my computations, I used the 1962–1970 cohorts, to make sure the results hold for a larger number of cohorts born before and after 1967. I in my comments I will refer to those cohorts as well.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Southern Demographic Association conference in 2003. I thank to Robert Schoen for valuable suggestions on many previous drafts of this article.
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Bradatan, C. Large, But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects. Popul Res Policy Rev 28, 389–404 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-008-9104-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-008-9104-7