Researchers focused upon the work-dropping out connection tend to show a U-shaped relationship between the likelihood of dropping out and the number of hours worked outside school, with a higher exit rate for both non-working students and for students whose working hours pass a critical threshold. Yet the data typically used by these researchers are drawn mainly from cross-sectional surveys, and as a result does not allow for any causal interpretation. The present article uses an event history analysis of Canadian longitudinal data covering seven years of a cohort, and offers original findings on the causal work-dropping out relationship at the university level. We find evidence showing that the evolution of the exit rates and the factors influencing the decision to quit a particular university programme differ substantially between students who want to enrol in another programme and those who do not. For the latter, we observe a critical threshold of 24h of work, beyond which negative effects in terms of non-completion start to appear. We find no negative effects arising from not working vs. working a few hours. Our findings thus tend to show that the higher exit rate among non-working students evidenced in cross-sectional data should be attributed to the fact that academic difficulties cause some potential university dropouts to stop working and to devote more time to school.

Parcours de formation : la recomposition des ségrégationsLes retours aux études postsecondaires : une expression de l'éducation tout au long de la vie ?Returns to postsecondary education: an expression of lifelong Learning? Rückkehr zu Hochschulstudien: ein Ausdruck des lebenslangen Lernens? El retorno a los estudios post-secundarios : ¿una expresión de educación permanente ?

Studies on the relationship between state policy and fertility usually seek to evaluate the impact of one or more measures on fertility. This article does not aim to focus on the impact of one measure in particular, or of public measures as a whole, on fertility, but rather on the way in which Canadian couples that are likely to have a first child react to the environment created by the state and the labour market. We use data from a prospective longitudinal survey of households conducted by Statistics Canada - Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics. We focus on couples in which both spouses are wage-earners before the birth of their first child. Our results show that few factors have a noticeable impact. The decision leading to the first birth appears to be governed by two different mechanisms - depending on whether or not the couple’s income is modest. When the family income is modest, the decision is based on the amount of recurrent financial support ; when the family income is average, the decision is based instead on the amount of maternity benefits that will compensate for the loss of income during maternity leave. In all cases, the female spouse’s permanent employment plays a decisive role. Ownership of the family residence also plays an important role. To sum up, the decision to have a first child appears to depend, above all, on the female spouse’s financial and employment circumstances and on the couple’s evaluation of what the family’s financial situation will be once the child is born.

L’indicateur souvent utilisé pour mesurer la fécondité des immigrantes et pour comparer son niveau à celui des femmes natives est l’indice synthétique de fécondité. Cependant, des recherches ont montré que cet indice tend à surestimer les écarts entre les immigrantes et les natives, car il attribue un niveau de fécondité qui reste marqué par l’âge des femmes au moment de l’arrivée. Pour contourner ce problème, il est nécessaire d’avoir recours à des approches longitudinales qui considèrent la partie de la vie féconde qui précède la migration. Au Québec, il est possible d’estimer la fécondité des immigrantes à l’aide de données de registres administratifs qui suivent des cohortes au fil du temps. Dans cet article, nous présentons la méthodologie employée pour estimer le nombre d’enfants mis au monde avant et après la migration et nous comparons la fécondité des immigrantes selon la descendance des générations. Les résultats montrent que la fécondité des femmes immigrantes au Québec est influencée par le calendrier de la migration. Quant aux estimations de la descendance à divers âges, le nombre moyen d’enfants varie selon la région de provenance, mais il ne dépasse pas les deux enfants par femme vers la fin de leur vie féconde.Total fertility rate is the indicator most often used to measure the fertility of immigrant women compared to native born women. But research shows that this indicator tends to overestimate the differences between immigrant and native born women, because the fertility level is affected by the woman’s age at the time of migration. To overcome this problem, longitudinal approaches can be used, which take into account the part of the woman’s fertile life preceding her migration. In Quebec, it is possible to estimate the fertility of immigrant women with the help of administrative registers, which follow cohorts of people over time. In this article we present the methodology used to estimate the number of children born before and after migration, and compare the fertility of immigrant women via their offspring in succeeding generations. The results show that the fertility of immigrant women to Quebec is influenced by the timing of their migration. Estimations of their offspring at different ages suggest that the average number of children varies with the region of origin but does not exceed two children per woman by the end of their reproductive lives

The authors introduce a method that allows the use of data from rotating panel surveys, a design used in many household or labour force surveys, to realize statistical analyses similar to event history analysis. The method is illustrated with two examples, one on the dynamics of poverty — the effect of demographic and socioeconomic factors on the hazard of becoming poor in Argentina — and the other on family dynamics — the conversion of consensual unions into marriages. Both examples use data from the Argentinean Encuesta Permanente de Hogares, a national survey that is not designed to collect prospective or biographical data. The method allows for the use of time-varying independent variables and thus allows one to estimate the effect of an event on the hazard of another event, as in conventional event history analysis; several examples are provided.