While a number of studies have examined the consequences of caregiving among employed women, surprisingly little research has explicitly compared how consequences differ between employed and not employed women. Moreover, very little research in this area has distinguished between part-time and full-time employment.

This paper examines these issues drawing on the 1996 General Social Survey of Canada. The sample for this study consists of women aged 25 to 64 who reported providing care to one or more people aged 65+ because of a long-term physical disability (n=426). Three employment status groups (full-time, part-time and not employed) are compared on positive consequences, burden, guilt, job adjustment, postponed opportunities, and social and economic consequences.

Results reveal significant differences between the three employment categories indicating that employment, both full and part-time, is associated with higher burden, guilt and social and economic consequences.

The effects of population aging on future health care costs are an important public policy concern in many countries. We focus in this paper on physician services and investigate how changes in the size and age distribution of a population can affect the aggregate and per capita costs of such services. The principal data set (unpublished, for Ontario) provides information about payments to physicians, by age and sex of patients. Using it, we derive age/cost profiles for 19 categories of physicians. Adopting an index-theoretic framework, we then use the profiles to analyse the "pure" effects of population change (historical or projected) on physician costs, and to decompose the effects into population growth effects and population aging effects. We present calculations for Ontario, for the populations of 15 industrialized countries, and for four theoretical populations.

In this paper, we present a conceptual model to describe an individual's preparations for later life. Situated in the life course perspective, this model invites a comprehensive and systematic study of later life planning. It describes a dynamic process that portrays the interplay between social structure and human agency. Through its consideration of collective preparations (the public protection programs offered by the state), individual preparations (financial and non-financial), and the interplay between them, this model provides fresh insight into the existing literature on retirement planning, the timing of retirement, savings, and consumption patterns in later life.

Moreover, the model may be used to structure research questions, to guide policy decision making and to point the direction for the design and content of future research studies. While the purpose of this paper is primarily the development of a conceptual model, we illustrate the model using the results of a self-completion semi-structured questionnaire on this topic that was completed by a convenience sample of 240 seniors in Canada. We conclude by suggesting a number of research questions that may be generated from the model.

Methods for time series modeling of mortality and stochastic forecasting of life expectancies are explored, using Canadian data. Consideration is given first to alternative indexes of aggregate mortality. Age-sex group system models are then estimated. Issues in the forecasting of life expectancies are discussed and their quantitative implications investigated. Experimental stochastic forecasts are presented and discussed, based on nonparametric, partially parametric, and fully parametric methods, representing alternatives to the well known Lee- Carter method. Some thoughts are offered on the interpretation of historical data in generating future probability distributions, and on the treatment of demographic uncertainty in long-run policy planning.

The objective of this paper is to use meta-analysis techniques to assess the impact of various factors on the extent of cooperation in standard linear public goods experiments using the voluntary contributions mechanism. Potentially relevant experiments were identified through searches of EconLit, the Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (IDEAS), and a survey article. A total of 349 potentially relevant studies were identified. Of these, 28 (representing a total of 711 groups of participants) met the inclusion criteria. Data were abstracted from these studies using a standardized protocol. Results were analyzed using weighted ordinary least squares. Average group efficiency was the dependent variable.

The major results are that:

• The marginal per capita return, communication, constant group composition over the session ("partners"), positive framing, and the use of children as subjects had a positive and significant effect (p<0.05) on the average level of contribution to the public good; and
• Heterogeneous endowments to subjects, experienced participants, and soliciting subjects' beliefs regarding other participants' behaviour prior to the start of the session/period had a negative and significant effect.

This study examines the incidence and duration of women's life course events, specifically childbearing, by generational age structure within the family, birth cohort, educational status, and place of birth. Data from the 1995 General Social Survey (GSS) of Canada is used to estimate the incidence and socio-demographic correlates of age-structured families - age-condensed, normative, and age-gapped according to the mother's age at the birth of her first child.

The results indicate that less than 10% of women with at least two children (N = 1,800) experience entrance into motherhood as a late life course event (e.g., at 30 years of age or older) as opposed to an early or "on-time" transition. Further, the mean birth interval is longer and family size is larger for age-condensed mothers versus normative and age-gapped mothers. Cohort differences regarding the incidence and duration of family life course events are also notable: older cohorts of women (1915-1930 and 1931-1946) have longer birth intervals and larger families than do women in younger cohorts (1946-1960 and 1961-1976). For level of educational attainment, women with less education marry at younger ages and have their first child at younger ages than their more educated counterparts. Finally, Canadian-born women marry and have their first child at younger ages compared to foreign-born women. Findings are discussed in the context of the literature on "age deadlines" and women's family life course events.

This paper examines intergenerational connections within Canadian families. Its focus is on intergenerational age structure, the interval or 'gap' in years that separates one generation from the next. Intergenerational age structure is measured in terms of the age of a mother at the birth of her first child. Using data from the 1995 General Social Survey of Canada, the study examines the socio-demographic characteristics of women (n=404) in three- and four-generation families (lineages) that are age-condensed (small age distances between generations that are the result of early fertility) and those that are age- gapped (with large age distances between generations that are the result of late fertility patterns).

Across two generations of women, there is a striking similarity in the distributions of age at first birth with just under one-third of the sample having early fertility, just over one-half falling into a normative or "on-time" category, and one-seventh having delayed fertility. However, when matched pairs of mothers and daughters are compared across generations, age-condensed and age-gapped lineage patterns show considerable variability. Although just under one-half of mother-daughter dyads show lineage consistency in family age structure across three generations (most typically in age-condensed/age-condensed or normative/normative age structures), low percentages of women whose family of origin was age-gapped repeat that age structure pattern in their own families of procreation. Socio-demographic factors such as mother's and daughter's age, family size, age at first marriage, and level of education are associated with lineage continuity and discontinuity in family age structure.

It is well known that in the United States the education premium--the ratio of the earnings of university graduates to the earnings of high school graduates--has risen sharply in the last twenty years. Some Canadian economists and policy makers presume the same fact holds in Canada. Since so much of modern growth theory and micro and macroecomomic policy turns on the education premium, it is important for social scientists and policy makers to know what has actually happened to the education premium. This paper argues that on the basis of available evidence over the last twenty years the premium has been constant or has fallen in Canada.

Two demographic events will have significant effects on the Ontario university system this decade. The first is the growth in the population of student age, which will increase the demand on the system. That increase is associated with the baby boom echo, but it will be exacerbated by the so-called "double cohort" (which will see two classes of secondary school graduates enter university in the same year) and by the trend towards higher enrolment rates. The second event the retirement of faculty hired in the late 1960s and the 1970s to meet the demands associated with the baby boom itself will reduce the supply of services that the university system can provide.. The purpose of this paper is to attach some numbers to these two effects and, in particular, to anticipate the need to recruit new faculty. The projections suggest that the minimum need for net recruitment of faculty by the end of this decade is equal to at least half of the current complement, and it may be considerably more.

This paper examines the economic well-being of women who become divorced or separated in mid and later life using 1994 data from the Statistics Canada Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. Three measures of economic well-being are considered: adjusted economic family total money income; before-tax low income cutoff; and ownership of dwelling. Women and men aged 65 and older in their first marriages are compared with women and men aged 65 and older divorced or separated women who had become divorced or separated at age 45 and older. Results show that women who become divorced or separated in mid and later life are more likely to be in poverty than married persons and men who divorce or separate in mid and later life. Persons who divorce or separate in mid and later life are less likely than married persons to live in a dwelling which is owned by a member of the household. Regression analyses show that receipt of pension income and earnings are positively associated with income for women who become divorced or separated in mid and later life. Implications for the Canadian legal and retirement income systems are discussed.