Population Council Research that makes a difference

Population and Development Review

June 2013, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Full article access available to subscribers)

Articles

• The Implementation of Preferences for Male Offspring / John Bongaarts
  
  Over the past quarter century the sex ratio at birth (SRB) has risen above natural levels in a number of countries, mostly in Asia. This rise has been made possible in populations with strong son preference by the increasing availability of safe, effective, and inexpensive technologies to determine the sex of a fetus and to end unwanted pregnancies. This article documents levels and trends in the sex ratio at birth, in preferences for male offspring (using information on desired number of girls and boys), and in the implementation of these preferences. DHS surveys from 61 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and for Indian states are the main source of data. A comparison of desired with actual SRBs finds large gaps in most populations, implying a substantial pent-up demand for male offspring and the technology to implement this preference. Two types of actions to implement preferences are considered: the practice of contraception to stop childbearing after the desired number of sons has been born and the use of sex-selective abortion to avoid female births. The second part of the article discusses factors that could influence the SRB, including the promotion of gender equality, and the implications of these factors for future trends. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 185–208]
  
  
• Surplus Chinese Men: Demographic Determinants of the Sex Ratio at Marriageable Ages in China / Catherine Tucker, Jennifer Van Hook
  
  We explore the demographic factors contributing to China’s unbalanced sex ratio at marriageable ages. We develop a stable population model of the sex ratio at marriagable ages, and compare a series of population projections with alternative underlying assumptions about the key demographic inputs. The stable population model demonstrates that several demographic factors interact to influence the sex ratio at marriagable ages, including the sex ratio at birth, population growth, the age gap of marriage partners, and the sex ratio of survival from birth to marriageable age. The population projections further demonstrate that policies that seek to reduce the sex ratio at birth and the age gap at marriage and, to a lesser extent, increase fertility would be most effective at alleviating the problem. But no demographic changes are likely to occur quickly enough to balance the sex ratio at marriagable ages in the near future. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 209–229]
  
  
• Family Instability and Pathways to Adulthood in Cape Town, South Africa / Rachel E. Goldberg
  
  Social, political, epidemiological, and economic forces have produced family instability during childhood for many young people transitioning to adulthood in South Africa. This study identifies pathways to adulthood for youth in Cape Town that capture the timing and sequencing of role transitions across the life domains of school, work, and family formation. It then uses these pathways to investigate the relationship between childhood family instability and the way young people’s lives unfold during the transition to adulthood. Results indicate that changes in co-residence with parents are associated with following less advantageous pathways into adulthood, independent of particular family structure or orphan status. Overall, the findings suggest that family instability influences not only single transitions for youth, but also combinations of transitions. They also indicate the value of a multi-dimensional conceptualization of the transition to adulthood in empirical work. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 231–256]
  
  
• The Baby Boom and Its Causes: What We Know and What We Need to Know / Jan Van Bavel, David S. Reher
  
  This study analyzes the timing, magnitude, and volume of the mid-twentieth century baby boom in European and non-European Western countries. The baby boom is found to have been especially strong in the non-European countries, fairly strong in some European countries, and quite weak in others. While the boom has often been linked with postwar economic growth and the recuperation of births postponed during the Depression era, we argue that this is only a limited part of the story. In most cases the recovery of the birth rate started well before the end of World War II, a fact not accounted for by existing theories. We investigate the roles played by the recovery of period as well as cohort fertility, the underlying marriage boom, and the recovery of marital fertility. We identify major puzzles for future research, including the reasons for strongly declining ages at marriage and the role played by contraceptive failure in the rise of high-parity births. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 257–288]
  
  

Data and Perspectives

• Cohort Abortion Measures for the United States / Sarah K. Cowan
  
  Demographers interested in abortion in the United States have thus far focused on cross-sectional and synthetic cohort measures, reflecting data availability. We now have cohorts that have completed their entire reproductive years after the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide. For women who are still in their childbearing years at the conclusion of data collection, I apply the Lee-Carter forecasting technique—its first application in abortion research—to project their completed age-specific abortion rates. Using true cohort measures reveals markedly different abortion experiences by cohort; in particular, a significant declining trend. I find stability in the distribution of abortion by abortion order and the racial composition of abortion incidences. In addition to the substantive findings, cohort measures shift the focus of quantitative abortion research from incidence rates to women’s lives over their reproductive years. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 289–307]
  
  
• Demographic Changes in Myanmar since 1983: An Examination of Official Data / Thomas Spoorenberg
  
  According to official estimate, the total population of Myanmar reached 59.8 million in 2010. Yet, serious doubt exists on the reliability of these data. From the body of empirical evidence, best estimates of mortality and fertility are derived and serve to reconstruct prospectively the population of the country from 1983 to 2010. Despite the uncertainty regarding the levels and trends in international migration, the results are unequivocal: given the observed development in mortality and fertility, the population of Myanmar could not have reached 59.8 million in 2010. In addition to encouraging reconsideration of current population estimates, this analysis should also prompt the government and the international community to redouble their efforts in preparing for the 2014 census; carrying out a high-quality count of the entire population, ideally followed by a postenumeration survey; conducting a thorough analysis of the census data; and publicly releasing the census results and accompanying analytical volumes in a timely manner. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 309–324]
  
  

Archives

• Thomas Paine on a Plan for a Welfare State
  
  The lineage of the modern welfare state is usually traced back only to the early twentieth century, in the work of opponents of laissez faire doctrines such as the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward. A much earlier anticipation is found in the long-running debates over reform of the English Poor Laws—primitive and harsh welfarism exercised at the level of the parish—and over utopian schemes of social insurance, notably as set out by Condorcet in the Esquisse (1795). Another early progenitor was Condorcet’s English contemporary Thomas Paine, writing in the second part (1792) of the Rights of Man on "ways and means of improving the condition of the poor." A practiced pamphleteer, Paine used simple declarative language: "When in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong with the system of government… Civil government [consists] in making that provision for the instruction of youth, and the support of age, as to exclude, as much as possible, profligacy from the one, and despair from the other." Paine calculates that in England some £4 million (out of £17 million in total annual tax revenues, mainly from customs and excise duties) could be spared from routine government expenditures, and sets out a simple plan for how this amount should be redistributed. He emphasizes that the welfare allocations are "not of the nature of a charity but of a right." And responsibilities are entailed as well: as a condition for support, parents would be required to educate their children ("a nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed"). Paine’s arithmetic holds water but not his demography: estimating the proportions over 50 in the population by guessing the ages of those he met in the streets of London (1 in 16 or 17) likely yielded a large undercount. Not surprisingly, Malthus was as forceful a critic of Paine as he was of Condorcet. His dismissal of Paine’s scheme came in the Second Essay of 1803: "there is one right which man has generally been thought to possess, which I am confident he neither does, nor can possess—a right to subsistence when his labour will not fairly purchase it." In fact, his characterization of Paine’s Rights of Man (as having "done great mischief among the lower and middling classes") immediately preceded, and may have engendered, Malthus’s notorious paragraph on Nature’s feast ("A man who is born into a world already possessed… has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food…"). The potential effect of welfare on fertility, of course, was for Malthus an underlying problem. "Were every man sure of a comfortable provision for a family," he wrote, "almost every man would have one." Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was born in England. He arrived in America on the eve of the American Revolution and soon achieved renown as the author of the pamphlet Common Sense (1776), presenting the case for independence. He returned to England shortly before the French Revolution. Rights of Man (1791), a general critique of monarchy, was a rejoinder to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France—and sufficiently pointed against Burke and the Crown for Paine to be tried for seditious libel (in absentia: he had fled to Paris). Undeterred, the following year he published Rights of Man: Part the Second, Combining Principle and Practice (London: J.S. Jordan, 1792), the book from which the passage below is taken. Another major work, The Age of Reason (1794), took aim at organized religion. His last few years were again spent in America. [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 325–332]

   

Book Reviews [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 333–356]

• Great Leap, Great Famine: A Review Essay [on Yang Jisheng, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine 1958–1962 and Zhou Xun (ed.), The Great Famine in China, 1958–1962: A Documentary History] / Cormac Ó Gráda
• The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us about Coming Conflicts and the Battle against Fate / Robert D. Kaplan
  Reviewed by Eric Kaufmann
• The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being / Derek Bok
  Reviewed by Larry Willmore
• World Development Report 2013: Jobs / World Bank
  Reviewed by Eddy Lee
• Causes and Consequences of Human Migration: An Evolutionary Perspective / Michael C. Crawford and Benjamin C. Campbell (eds.)
  Reviewed by Bobbi S. Low
  
  

Short Reviews [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 357–360]

• Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation / Philip Cafaro and Eileen Crist (eds.)
• One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? / Gordon Conway
• China’s One-Child Policy and Multiple Caregiving: Raising Little Suns in Xiamen / Esther C. L. Goh
• Global Health and International Relations / Colin McInnes and Kelley Lee
• Religion and AIDS in Africa / Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb

Documents

• Productivity Growth in Global Agriculture
  
  World agricultural output over the period since the 1960s has grown on average about 2.2 percent per year—somewhat higher at the start, the peak of the Green Revolution, and around 2.5 percent per year in the first decade of this century. (The same 50-year period has seen a gradual slowing of world population growth, from close to 2 percent per year to around 1.2 percent.) In the earlier part of the period output growth came predominantly from additional resource inputs, chiefly land, labor, irrigation, fertilizer, and energy; over time, growth has increasingly been a result of improvements in the productivity of these inputs. The report reproduced below, issued by the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, presents a succinct overview of this half-century of productivity trends in world agriculture. The timing and extent of the shift to productivity-led production growth have varied widely between developed and developing countries and by region. Looking just at land and labor productivity, the trends are neatly presented in the report in a double log chart plotting output per worker against output per hectare from 1961 to 2009 for each of the major world regions. The lagging status of sub-Saharan Africa is striking, especially in the virtually stagnant level of labor productivity. While Africa still has ample scope for resource-led agricultural growth, the region’s continued rapid demographic expansion will compel greater attention to raising productivity levels. Since much agricultural technology is location-specific, this will require countries to substantially strengthen their capacity for agricultural R&D. The report, “New Evidence Points to Robust but Uneven Productivity Growth in Global Agriculture,” by Keith Fuglie and Sun Ling Wang, appeared in Amber Waves, US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, September 2012. It is available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012-september/global-agriculture.aspx. The cited reference, Fuglie, Wang, and Ball (2012), is: Keith Fuglie, Sun Ling Wang, and V. Eldon Ball (eds.), Productivity Growth in Agriculture: An International Perspective (Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 2012). [39, no. 2 (Jun 13): 361–365]

 

To read abstracts or search contents of previous volumes, visit Wiley Online Library (volumes 1999–2012) or JSTOR (volumes 1975–2010).

Population and Development Review

Population and Public Policy:
Essays in Honor of Paul Demeny
McNicoll, Bongaarts, and Churchill (eds.), 2012
A collection of 21 essays of interest to a broad range of readers in the social sciences and public affairs. Themes are: population renewal and intergenerational relations; low fertility and its consequences; public policy and its role in lowering high fertility; human demands on the natural environment; and population theory and measurement.
(downloadable contents)
vii + 340 pp., $24.95

Demographic Transition and Its Consequences
Lee and Reher (eds.), 2011
Explores aspects of the transitional and post-transition landscape from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, covering both modern industrial societies and emerging economies, and taking note of the circumstances of latecomers in the transition process. (downloadable contents)
vii + 275 pp., $13.50

Population Aging, Human Capital Accumulation, and Productivity Growth
Prskawetz, Bloom, and Lutz (eds.), 2008
Studies included cover the broad economic significance of the global aging of the work force. (downloadable contents)
vii + 326 pp., $25.00

The Political Economy of Global Population Change, 1950–2050
Demeny and McNicoll (eds.), 2006
Explores the international political dimensions of the population explosion and its aftermath. (contents)
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
viii + 288 pp., $21.00

Aging, Health, and Public Policy: Demographic and Economic Perspectives
Waite (ed.), 2004
Explores the economic, demographic, and epidemiological aspects of population aging trends and consequences. (downloadable contents)
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 265 pp., $21.00

Life Span: Evolutionary, Ecological, and Demographic Perspectives
Carey and Tuljapurkar (eds.), 2003
Explores the subject of the life span, both human and animal, by bringing together research conducted by scholars from many disciplines. (downloadable contents)
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
xi + 293 pp., $18.00

Population and Environment: Methods of Analysis
Lutz, Prskawetz, and Sanderson (eds.), 2002
This book represents the first systematic collection of population–environment methodologies and includes eight essays by demographers, social scientists, and environmental scientists.
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 251 pp., $18.00

Global Fertility Transition
Bulatao and Casterline (eds.), 2001
Explores the factors underlying fertility transition, analyzes recent trends, and considers the implications for future projections.
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
xi + 340 pp., $18.00

Population and Economic Change in East Asia
Chu and Lee (eds.), 2000
This volume, which analyzes the interplay between economic and demographic trends in East Asia, is novel in treating population aging as an integral part of the region's demographic transition.
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
ix + 320 pp., $15.00

Frontiers of Population Forecasting
Lutz, Vaupel, and Ahlburg (eds.), 1998
Reexamination of the procedures of population forecasting in response to emerging demands. Addresses key issues: What population characteristics beyond the standard variables of age and sex should routinely enter population forecasts? When should forecasts take account of economic or environmental feedbacks? How is forecasting accuracy to be assessed and what is the past record? What is the state of the art of stochastic time series modeling of population change? How can users cope with probability distributions? What scope is there for application of methods to incorporate expert opinion into population forecasting?
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 199 pp., $15.00

Fertility in the United States: New Patterns, New Theories
Casterline, Lee, and Foote (eds.), 1996
Assessment of substantial and unappreciated changes in US fertility behavior during the past two decades, with new frameworks and theories for interpreting these changes.
Available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 340 pp., $20.00

The New Politics of Population: Conflict and Consensus in Family Planning
Finkle and McIntosh (eds.), 1994
An examination of the major issues and actors—political and religious leaders, feminists, and others—and the events that have shaped global trends in family planning policies and programs in recent decades.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 276 pp.

Resources, Environment, and Population: Present Knowledge, Future Options
Davis and Bernstam (eds.), 1990
Explores impending problems and interrelations between population trends, resource use, and environmental consequences.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
xii + 421 pp.

Rural Development and Population: Institutions and Policy
McNicoll and Cain (eds.), 1989
Investigation of the ways in which the institutional configurations of societies influence the relationships between population dynamics and rural social and economic change.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 366 pp.

Population and Resources in Western Intellectual Traditions
Teitelbaum and Winter (eds.), 1988
An examination of the intersection of science and ideology in the development of Western thought on population, resources, and the environment since the industrial revolution.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 310 pp.

Below-Replacement Fertility in Industrial Societies: Causes, Consequences, Policies
Davis, Bernstam, and Ricardo-Campbell (eds.), 1986
Systematic discussions of the demographic effects of below-replacement fertility with efforts to explain its social origins, to determine the likely societal consequences, and to assess potential policy responses.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
x + 360 pp.

Child Survival: Strategies for Research
Mosley and Chen (eds.), 1984
In all poor countries, malnutrition and infectious diseases are the major biological processes leading to child deaths; but the social, economic, and environmental determinants of the variations in these conditions in different societies are poorly understood. This supplement contains papers by specialists within two separate disciplines—demography and epidemiology—primarily concerned with investigating such topics.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
ix + 416 pp.

Income Distribution and the Family
Ben-Porath (ed.), 1982
Addresses the important question of how family composition and related demographic processes affect and are affected by the generation and distribution of income in developing countries, and examines the difficult technical and conceptual issues involved in analyzing these relationships.
Out of print; available online from JSTOR (offsite link)
vii + 248 pp.

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Population and Development Review

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