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Articles
Chief, Mortality and Migration Section, Population Division, United Nations Various measures of international migration are used to discuss trends since 1965. Estimates of the migrant stock in each country of the world for 1965 and 1990 are used to assess changes at the global level. For developed countries, flow statistics permit the analysis of trends in South-to-North and East-to-West migration over 196596. Analysis of trends in other world regions is made on the basis of less comprehensive data. Labor migration to Western Asia and the Pacific Rim is assessed using statistics on contract clearances issued by sending countries. Data compiled by UNHCR are used to evaluate trends in forced migration. The resulting overview captures both the continuity and change exhibited by migration trends since 1965. [24,no.3 (Sep 98):429-468]
Professor of Asian Studies and Politics, Hampshire College Huang Banghan, Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences College, Anhui Agricultural University Wang Liyao, Research Fellow and Director, Philosophy Institute, Anhui Academy of Social Sciences This article reports the findings of a research project conducted in 199596 on infant abandonment and adoption in China. These two practices were found to be closely linked. Restrictive birth planning policies combined with parents' perceived need for a son produce patterns of abandonment that primarily affect higher-parity daughters in sonless families. A lesser, but nonetheless strong desire for daughters among daughterless families leads to adoption as a means to remedy this situation as well as a means to overcome childlessness. These aspects of contemporary Chinese culture--the desire for daughters and the willingness to adopt unrelated children as a method of family construction--have helped alleviate the ill effects of increased infant abandonment in the 1980s and 1990s by leading many families to adopt foundlings. Because government laws and regulations discriminate in various ways against foundlings and over-quota children, and punish the parents who raise them, much of this popular solution to a difficult social problem has taken place outside of official channels and institutions. There is hope that legal changes may soon alter this situation. [24,no.3 (Sep 98):469-510]
Senior Research Scholar, Institute for Social Research, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Fordham University Drawing on a variety of sources, the article examines how population statistics were used by the Nazis in planning and implementing the Holocaust and how the data systems that gathered these statistics and other information were also employed to assist in carrying out the Holocaust. This review covers experience in Germany, Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Norway. Attention is also given to the role played in this work by some of those then professionally active in demography and statistics. The use and impact of perpetrator-generated Holocaust mortality data and other estimates of Jewish losses presented at the Nuremberg trials are then described. Finally, present-day implications of the historical experience under review are discussed. These include: the lessons for formulating prudent national statistical policies, approaches to investigating future genocides and prosecuting those believed responsible, and the need for increased attention by statisticians and demographers to the ethical dimensions of their work. [24,no.3 (Sep 98):511-552]
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, and Research Associate, Population Research Center, University of Texas-Austin Richard G. Rogers, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, and Research Associate, Population Program, University of Colorado Isaac W. Eberstein, Professor, Department of Sociology and Center for the Study of Population, Florida State University Sociodemographic differences in US adult mortality, although increasingly better documented, remain poorly understood. Differential mortality studies often adopt descriptive approaches that are narrow in scope and conceptually ambiguous. Following a discussion of the conventional approaches used to analyze differentials in adult mortality, the authors pose a series of questions aimed at encouraging research on differential mortality along new, causally pertinent directions. These include the modeling of differential mortality in a proximate determinants perspective, the incorporation of time into differential mortality models, the inclusion of more refined outcome measures, and the use of a macro-level perspective to better understand mortality differentials. Examples of recent studies expanding in these directions are briefly described. [24,no.3 (Sep 98):553-578] Notes and Commentary
Assistant Professor of West European Studies and History, Indiana University This essay explores generally the literature on population and policy in interwar Western Europe that has emerged in the past 15 years or so and considers in depth several dealing with the Italian Fascist "demographic battle," the topic of the author's own research. Population policy (and theory) in that period inevitably overlapped with eugenic and racial concerns, and those issues are considered as well. The recent proliferation of national studies--on Britain, Germany, and Italy, but surprisingly not France--argues for a new synthesis. [24,no.3 (Sep 98):579-592] Data and Perspectives
Associate Professor, Department of Demography, University of California, Berkeley Life expectancy in Japan rose at an unprecedented rate in the years following World War II. By around 1980, Japan had attained its current position of world leader in terms of average length of life. However, after catching and then surpassing other countries, the pace of mortality decline in Japan now appears to be converging toward international trends. [24,no.3 (Sep 98):593-600] Archives
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