One of the most recognizable and important changes occurring in the West is rapid population growth. This article intends to address questions associated with whether patterns of population growth and income migration are associated with "new" and "old" West economies. Rural restructuring in the U.S. has created a group of counties with service-based economies. In the Mountain West, a number of counties with service-based economies are located in areas with high levels of environmental or natural amenities, creating what has been termed the "New West." Migration to the rural parts of the Mountain West, and the income transfers associated with migration, are increasingly concentrated within these New West counties. Rapid population growth, the changing characteristics of in-migrants, and their spatial concentration in New West counties provide a basis for conflicts over what the rural West is becoming.
This paper examines the initiation of sexual activity, ®rst marriage and ®rst birth as key steps in family formation. These events mark the transition to adulthood and generally occur in the late teens and early twenties in most Latin American countries. Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine the timing of these events across birth cohorts, comparing urban and rural areas, countries, cultural regions and educational groups. The average life course for young women in Latin America consists of the initiation of intercourse as adolescents, entering partnerships about one year later, and giving birth about a year after that. This pattern remained fairly stable over the time period examined. Education substantially delays these family transitions and the education effect is similar in most countries. Latin American women with secondary levels of schooling are signi®cantly less likely to experience early marriage or parenthood relative to those with no schooling. Urban residence also delays entry into sexual activity, marriage and parenthood at the bivariate level. However, once education is controlled for, the effect of residence reverses ± that is, urban residence is associated with early transition ages. A combination of national boundaries and cultural groupings explain more of the variation in transition rates than either grouping alone. Thus, we conclude that both national and cultural factors appear to in¯uence family transitions in Latin America, in addition to the effects of education and urbanisation.
This study provides a comprehensive investigation of statistical discrepancies in generally accepted international trade figures published by the IMF between 1948 and 1994. We calculated export over- and underestimation for each country and all of their bilateral trading partners. By keeping totals for over- and underestimation in separate categories we avoided the cancellation effect of aggregating positive and negative discrepancies among partner countries. In general, the results show a significant improvement in the quality of trade data over time. However for many countries, relatively large discrepancies still exist that defy technical explanations, such as the CIF-FOB margins. Also, because export over- and underestimation coexist for most of the countries at varying degrees, use of the aggregate sum of the discrepancy might disguise the actual magnitude of the problem. A significant difference exists in the relative magnitude and dispersion of trade discrepancies between OECD countries and non-OECD countries. Trend analysis suggests that the accuracy of trade data is improving at a faster rate in the non-OECD than in the OECD countries.
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