Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1993

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Sociology

Major Professor

Donald W. Hastings

Committee Members

Suzanne Kurth, Donald Ploch

Abstract

This thesis analyzes rural-urban differences in the patterns for Tennessee males and females of entry into first marriage, divorce, widowhood, remarriage, and mortality for the years 1980 and 1990. Results are compared to 1970 findings to examine changing patterns over a twenty year interval. Vital registration and census data from 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1989, 1990, 1991 are used to construct increment-decrement life tables for rural and urban males and females. The analysis will be centered on 1980 and 1990. The analysis of rural-urban marital patterns over twenty years provides a framework for examining the changing variables assumed to influence nuptuality and mortality. Specifically, the social, demographic, and economic changes occurring in the rural areas will decrease the differences between rural-urban marital transition patterns. The 1980 and 1990 findings confirm the 1970 results. Rural women and men have shorter life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, younger median ages of entry into first marriage and divorce, a greater proportion of their cohorts ever marrying, lower probabilities of divorce, and higher probabilities of widowhood than urban women and men. The trend from 1970 to 1990 is a decrease in rural-urban differentials. The changes from 1970 to 1990 suggest that urbanization, technological advances in communication and transportation, and the diffusion of urban lifestyles and values may have blurred the rural-urban distinction.

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