The Italo-Greek ethnolinguistic minority, living in thirteen villages of southern Italy, marry largely amongst themselves but there are some intermarriages with native Italians. The majority of marriages are within the villages, but there is some marriage movement from one Italo-Greek village to another. Data on marriage and birthplace of parents and grandparents obtained by questionnaires to families of primary school children (aged 6–13 years) are analysed, to show the trends in breakdown of isolation over the last two generations.

The nursing behaviour of rural Nepali women, from two castes inhabiting the same village, is quantified on the basis of 2202 hr of continuous and direct day-time observation over 1 year. Feed duration, interval, total time and daily frequency are examined in relation to women's work, particularly the type of subsistence activity and seasonality. ‘Opportunity’ feeds are governed both by infant demands and maternal activity. Caste differences in birth intervals are also discussed.

Although demographic information on Nigeria has increased in the past two decades, information on adult mortality in the country is still sparse. This paper provides information on the levels and trends in male and female adult mortality among the Kanuri of north-east Nigeria. Analysis of reports of orphanhood and widowhood suggests moderately high levels of mortality.

Age at marriage is one of the factors that influence the fertility behaviour of women, particularly in a society like Nepal where contraceptive use is low. Socioeconomic and cultural factors, particularly religion and ethnicity, are important variables in determining age at marriage in Nepal. Fertility was negatively related with age at marriage. Marriage duration had a greater influence on fertility than age at marriage, although these were strongly correlated.

Information on social and family aspects of marriage was obtained from a sample of over a thousand marriages solemnised in England and Wales in 1979. The data include the standard demographic variables concerning the couple and their marriage and also: the day of the week the marriage was celebrated; whether the fathers or relatives of similar surname to the spouses acted as witnesses; the patterns of name usage by brides; the numbers of forenames of the marriage partners and their fathers; and the frequency of bridegrooms having one or more forenames in common with their fathers. The factors are analysed in terms of social class differences as well as in relation to the distance over which marriages range and other demographic characteristics of the partners and their marriage.

This study was conducted in 1985 in Asunción, Paraguay, 6 years after the closure of the state supported family planning services. Data from national surveys in 1977 and 1987 permit a comparison of sources of contraceptive supplies before and after the elimination of government support for family planning. The purchase of pseudo-abortifacients from private pharmacies was used as an indication of induced abortion. After the loss of government clinics, it is suggested that some women turned to pharmacists to obtain pseudo-abortifacients when faced with unwanted pregnancy. There is an indication of increased pseudo-abortifacient use, particularly among unmarried women and those from poorer neighbourhoods.

This paper applies models of the onset of adolescent sexual intercourse using national data from Denmark and the USA. The model gave excellent fits to data on Danish Whites and a good fit to American Whites, but the model-fits for American Blacks and Hispanics were not as good. The weakness of the latter model fits may reflect either real processes that the model does not capture or problems in the reliability of adolescent sexuality data.

The effects of socioeconomic factors on secular trends in suicide rates in Japan for the periods 1953–72 and 1973–86 were investigated using twelve socioeconomic indicators. Multiple regression analysis showed that the socioeconomic indicators affecting suicide rates were not identical in the two periods. The rates in both sexes in 1953–72 were closely related to unemployment rate and the labour force but between 1973 and 1986, divorce rate and the proportion in tertiary industry were most influential. The changes reflect the socioeconomic changes in industrial structure in Japan in transition from an industrial to a service economy.

The relationship between parents' stated sex preferences for children and actual parental behaviour towards sons and daughters is examined among the Mukogodo, a group of traditional pastoralists in rural Kenya. Although their cultural values are male-centred and they tend to express a preference for sons, Mukogodo parents actually appear to be more solicitous of daughters, and the Mukogodo have a strongly female-biased childhood sex ratio. Studies of stated sex preferences should therefore be coupled with attempts to assess actual parental investment in sons and daughters.

The pseudo-genetic analysis of given names shows that, in the Scilly Isles, coefficients of relationship of first names are similar on St Mary's, the Outer Isles, and in the total sample of 5666 individuals married there in two and a half centuries. Comparable coefficients of relationship of a sample of 1658 given names in marriages in England and Wales in 1975 are considerably smaller, but similar within and between districts. The coefficients of relationship of given names on the Scilly Isles decreased during the 19th and especially the 20th centuries in parallel with decreases in random relationship from surnames. The genetic versus cultural–linguistic factors cannot be distinguished in the temporal variation in names, but the geographic differentiation virtually always reported in surnames is not present in these examples of given names and the geographic pattern in the surnames thus seems to result from the hereditary aspect of surnames. This result supports the validity of use of surnames in models of human genetic geography.