Life expectancy in the United States fares poorly in international comparisons, primarily because of high mortality rates above age 50. Its low ranking is often blamed on a poor performance by the health care system rather than on behavioral or social factors. This paper presents evidence on the...

This paper reviews the major social and demographic forces influencing American fertility levels with the aim of predicting changes during the next three decades. Increases in the Hispanic population and in educational attainment are expected to have modest and offsetting effects on fertility...

This paper estimates child mortality by race and nativity for the U.S. as a whole and the Death Registration Area based on the public use micro- samples of the 1900 and 1910 censuses. We compare indirect estimates to mortality rates and parameters based on published census and vital statistics...

How long we live, and how long members of our families and social groups live, is extraordinarily important to us. It's not a subject of daily discussion, but it would be if we were threatened with a return to earlier conditions. Unfortunately, the subject of longevity falls between the cracks...

This paper reviews and develops techniques of estimating the proportion of marriages that end in divorce which are based on disruption rates observed during a particular period of time. A source of bias in commonly used indirect estimation procedures is identified and methods of adjusting for...

We project the effects of declining smoking and increasing obesity on mortality in the United States over the period 2010-2040. Data on cohort behavioral histories are integrated into these projections. Future distributions of body mass indices are projected using transition matrices applied to...