Demographic Turnover Research Articles

The Relationship between Demographic Variables and Intent to Stay in the Military: Medical Personnel in a U.S. Air Force Hospital

This study tested empirically the relationships between eleven demographic variables and intent to stay in the U.S. Air Force, used as a proxy for turnover. The research reported here was conducted among military medical personnel at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. Data were collected by questionnaire and from records. Ordinary least squares regression analysis was used to estimate the effects of the eleven demographic variables upon intent to stay in the U.S. Air Force. The results support three of Price's empirical generalizations regarding the relationships between demographic variables (occupation, education, and age) and turnover; add two new generalizations (rank and gender); and do not support one relationship (length of service). The research yielded no data supporting or not supporting Price's two generalizations pertaining to blue-collar employees.

GLOBAL POPULATION STRUCTURE AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GREEN TURTLE (CHELONIA MYDAS) IN TERMS OF MATRIARCHAL PHYLOGENY.

To address aspects of the evolution and natural history of green turtles, we assayed mitochondrial (mt) DNA genotypes from 226 specimens representing 15 major rookeries around the world. Phylogenetic analyses of these data revealed (1) a comparatively low level of mtDNA variability and a slow mtDNA evolutionary rate (relative to estimates for many other vertebrates); (2) a fundamental phylogenetic split distinguishing all green turtles in the Atlantic-Mediterranean from those in the Indian-Pacific Oceans; (3) no evidence for matrilineal distinctiveness of a commonly recognized taxonomic form in the East Pacific (the black turtle C.m. agassizi or C. agassizi); (4) in opposition to published hypotheses, a recent origin for the Ascension Island rookery, and its close genetic relationship to a geographically proximate rookery in Brazil; and (5) a geographic population substructure within each ocean basin (typically involving fixed or nearly fixed genotypic differences between nesting populations) that suggests a strong propensity for natal homing by females. Overall, the global matriarchal phylogeny of Chelonia mydas appears to have been shaped by both geography (ocean basin separations) and behavior (natal homing on regional or rookery-specific scales). The shallow evolutionary population structure within ocean basins likely results from demographic turnover (extinction and colonization) of rookeries over time frames that are short by evolutionary standards but long by ecological standards.

Labor force change in Germany since 1882: A life cycle perspective

Only as far as the two oldest cohorts are concerned can we speak of a majority still working in agrarian jobs. Beginning with the men born in the middle of the last century, the main occupation shifts to mining and industry. This continued to be true for all cohorts during following 100 years. The development of the youngest cohorts seems to show that at the end of the occupational life, their members will be more strongly represented in the service sector than in the manufacturing branches. Using the cohort approach, this transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one and the further development of a society organized around the offer of services, could have been handled through the demographic turnover of the potential labor force rather than through occupational shifts by individuals. For the present, the empirical analyses can be summarized as follows. A general pattern of occupational structural change at the cohort level covering all branches of the economy does not exist for Germany. In the agricultural area, which showed a permanent and strong decrease of the work force, the entry placements of younger people stayed relatively high until the 1950s and went along with an increasing exit mobility during the employment life. Surprisingly, in the expanding secondary sector, one can find an age structure similar to that existing in the agricultural sector. The rapid growth of service sector occupations was not accomplished by an enlarged recruitment of younger people, but rather by the entry of cohort members at a later time in their occupational life. Relative to the sectoral extension, the entrance of younger people into the tertiary sector was distinctly lower. Extending over all sectors, the cohort succession shows a development of the entry placements and job mobility, which can, ex post, be characterized as an increasingly faulty allocation of young persons. Within the societal development, the younger labor force—especially during the time of stagnation until 1950—represented, more and more, an older sectoral occupational structure rather than a modern one. This fact, and the consequence of an increasingly higher mobility during the working life, led to episodes of general social reallocation which exceeded by several times the minimum of individual moves required to handle the structural change of the occupational system. As to the membership of worker and white-collar positions during life, remarkable (not yet explained theoretically) and socially far-reaching results were found. The fast demographic exchange of the industrial workers and the increasing transformation of dependent nonmanual workplaces to career positions have to be emphasized especially. These events were superimposed upon the sectoral regrouping of the work force through extensive vertical mobility. To a great extent a very old life cycle structure could be applied to the four oldest cohorts: one stayed in the economic area which one entered as a young person or as a family member. In the course of life, one passed through the social stages of apprentice-journeyman-self-employed. Starting with the VIth cohort, born in the 5 years before the first occupation census in the German Reich, the sectoral mobility constantly increased, and older social positions, like journeymen and assistant, quantitatively developed from more periods in one's life to the destiny in one's life. Newer social positions, like employees, which at the beginning were introduced as permanent positions and were supposed to create a separate social class, became typically intragenerationally achievable ends. In the years around the First World War and then again in the fifties, the change of such life cycle patterns became very pronounced. All cohorts born between 1860 and 1945, it appears, have experienced the change of the occupational system during their working life in a much more intensive way than the shifting of the labor force as seen by a comparison of cross-sectional distributions over time. Research on life-stage dependent allocation to different types of occupation could help to find an explanation for the high structural mobility. But through an international comparison 21 21 As far as they are comparable the results for Germany appear to be in remarkable contrast to those found for the United States (Goldin, 1984) and Great Britain (Heim, 1984). it would be possible to determine whether the findings apply only to Germany or can be interpreted as a general pattern of adaption to structural changes.