Jack Goody, Fellow, St. John's College, University of Cambridge In seeing Europe as the forerunner in the development of industrial capitalism and of lower fertility, historians have examined predisposing factors in the web of family variables that may have led to these conditions. The influential hypothesis by John Hajnal draws a sharp line between the regimes of Europe and the rest of the world, particularly Asia. It acknowledges that mean household size does not differ significantly in the two cases, but attributes the difference to the contrast between the "joint households" of the East and the single-couple arrangements of the West. This article contends that the data do not fully justify such a sharp dichotomy. In particular, the categorization exaggerates the differences with respect to internal structure and also with respect to the related problems of family labor and service, household fission, and the public (rather than the familial) safety net for the aged poor. [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 1-20]
Global Trends in AIDS Mortality
John Bongaarts, Vice President, Research Division, the Population Council Since the late 1970s, the AIDS epidemic has spread rapidly worldwide, and by mid-1995 a cumulative total of approximately 18.5 million adults had been infected with HIV, the epidemic's etiological agent. A set of projections of the annual number of AIDS cases and AIDS deaths from 1995 to 2005 for each of the world's major regions is presented. The epidemic is expected to continue to grow rapidly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By contrast, in North America and Europe the annual number of new AIDS cases is projected to level off in the next few years. The effect of the epidemic on the death rate will be highest in sub-Saharan Africa, but population growth in this region will remain high. [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 21-45]
Brazil's Fertility Decline, 1965-95: A Fresh Look at Key Factors
George Martine, Senior Fellow, Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard University Brazil's rapid fertility decline occurred during a period of extraordinarily intense social change, which encompassed times of both rapid economic growth and economic crisis. The widespread institutional changes introduced by the military regime in the mid-1960s as part of its efforts to induce rapid modernization had several unintended impacts on the motivation to control fertility and on the ability to do so. Several characteristics of Brazil's fertility decline warrant highlighting. First, high rates of abortion and sterilization are the primary means by which the decline was achieved. This outcome is partly attributable to the interplay of attitudes, policies, and changing agendas of key social actors, which tended to limit the practical availability of other effective methods. The increased motivation to control fertility is traceable to the indirect effects of institutional changes in the areas of health and social security. The strong influence of the mass media on social behavior, including reproductive behavior, is also noteworthy. [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 47-75]
The Politics of the Revival of Infant Abandonment in China, with Special Reference to Hunan
Kay Johnson, Professor of Asian Studies and Politics, School of Social Science, Hampshire College Drawing primarily on investigative reports from Hunan civil affairs departments, this article discusses the growing problem of female infant abandonment in the late 1980s and the relationship between this phenomenon and China's population-control efforts. The article also discusses the direct and indirect complicity of local cadres in mishandling this problem, the bureaucratic conflicts and obstacles confronted in providing care and finding adoptive homes for abandoned children, and central government efforts since 1993 to improve conditions in orphanages. Finally, it explores the possible contribution of abandonment to the phenomenon of the "missing girls." [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 77-98]
Notes and Commentary Public Expenditures on Immigrants to the United States, Past and Present
Julian L. Simon, Professor, College of Business and Management, University of Maryland, College Park Good data show that in the 1970s immigrants to the United States contributed more to the public coffers than they received in public services. The data, displayed here in fuller detail than in an earlier article in this journal, confirm the conclusion set forth by the author more than a decade earlier. This conclusion is corroborated by Canadian studies for the 1980s and 1990s and by the crude US data available for the most recent period. Any excess in welfare expenditures on immigrants relative to natives is probably limited to the narrowly defined category of welfare payments, which are relatively insignificant compared to expenditures on schooling and social security, and probably occurs only among older immigrants. [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 99-109]
On Substituting Sex Preference Strategies in East Asia: Does Prenatal Sex Selection Reduce Postnatal Discrimination?
Daniel Goodkind, Assistant Research Scientist, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan Recent evidence from East Asia suggests that parents use prenatal sex testing to selectively abort female fetuses, a practice manifested in rising sex ratios (males per females) at birth. Many observers have condemned prenatal sex testing, arguing that it results in discriminatory abortion against females. However, observers have neglected the dynamics between this new prenatal discrimination and traditional postnatal discrimination against young daughters. If the option of sex-selective abortion implies that daughters carried to term are more likely to be wanted, postnatal discrimination might decline. Evidence from East Asia is used to investigate this "substitution hypothesis." In societies where excess daughter mortality existed in the 1970s, rises in the sex ratio at birth in the 1980s tended to be associated with declines in excess daughter mortality. This preliminary support for the substitution hypothesis suggests that judging the morality of sex-selective abortion requires prior consideration of the prevalence and relative evils of both prenatal and postnatal discrimination. [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 111-125]
Data and Perspectives Age Patterns and Time Sequence of Mortality in National Populations with the Highest Expectation of Life at Birth
Ansley J. Coale, Senior Research Demographer, Office of Population Research, Princeton University This note characterizes the age estimators of mortality in life tables at very low mortality by a combination of a time pattern of rising expectations of life at birth and model life tables at very low mortality levels. The fit to well- recorded low-mortality tables is very tight. If these populations are approaching a lower limit of death rates, these rates are likely to match the new model with expectation of life at birth of about 85 years, rather than a rectangular survival schedule. [22 no. 1 (Mar 96): 127-135]
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