Abstracts
June 1999, Vol. 25, No. 2

Articles

• Is Low Fertility a Temporary Phenomenon in the European Union?

Ron Lesthaeghe, professor of demography and social science research methods at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels and member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences
Paul Willems, research associate in demography at the Ministry of the Flemish Community in Brussels

This article addresses two questions: (i) will the mere end of further postponement of fertility in the EU-countries lead to an appreciable rise in European fertility and bring total fertility rates closer to replacement level, as witnessed in the United States and (ii) what are the chances that such a stop to postponement is imminent? The answer to the first question is positive, but only if there is enough recuperation of fertility at older ages. Translated in the Bongaarts-Feeney framework, this condition means that the birth-order-specific TFRs would indeed remain constant. In the absence of full recuperation at older ages, the induced rise in the national TFRs would be trivial and by no means restore period and cohort TFRs to replacement levels. Hence, caution is needed when using the Bongaarts-Feeney adjusted TFRs for projective purposes. With respect to the second question, female education and employment trends in tandem with ideational and family disruption data are used to speculate about the prospects for such an end to further fertility postponement and for fertility increases at older ages. Strikingly, EU-countries that have the greatest potential for still later fertility are also the ones with very low TFRs (below 1.5) at present. The overall conclusion is that low to very low fertility in the EU is unlikely to be a temporary phenomenon. [25, no. 2 (Jun 99) 211­228]

• How Influential Are Demography Journals?

Hendrik P. van Dalen, Senior Researcher, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague, and Senior Research Associate, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Research Center for Economic Policy and Tinbergen Institute
Kène Henkens, Senior Researcher, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague

This article examines, by means of citation analysis for the years 1991-1995, the process of knowledge dissemination in demography journals and the intellectual exchange of demography journals with neighboring social sciences. In addition, it investigates the degree of uncitedness in demography journals. It turns out that a considerable percentage of articles are left uncited: 36 percent of the articles published in demography journals between 1990 and 1992 remained uncited in the five years following their publication. However, these overall uncitedness rates conceal large variations between journals. General-oriented demography journals from the US are well cited. Within the set of demography journals, knowledge flows from general to specialized journals and to a lesser extent the other way round. Specialized journals play a minor role in the construction and exchange of fundamental demographic knowledge. They do, however, influence specific audiences in neighboring social sciences. [25, no. 2 (Jun 99) 229­251]

• Is Fertility Behavior in Our Genes? Findings from a Danish Twin Study

Hans-Peter Kohler, Head, Research Group on Social Dynamics and Fertility, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
e-mail: kohler@demogr.mpg.de
Joseph L. Rodgers, Professor of Psychology, University of Oklahoma
e-mail: jrodgers@oupsy.psy.ou.edu
Kaare Christensen, Research Professor, the Danish Twin Registry, Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health, and the Danish Center for Demographic Research, Odense University, Odense, Denmark
e-mail: k-christensen@win-chs.ou.dk

This article investigates the fertility of Danish twins born during the periods 1870­1910 and 1953­64 in order to pursue two central questions for understanding human reproduction: Do genetic dispositions influence fertility and fertility-related behavior? Does the relevance of the "nature versus nurture" debate shift over time or with demographic regimes? The authors find that genetic influences on fertility exist, but that their relative magnitude and pattern are contingent on gender and on the socioeconomic environment experienced by cohorts. Among females born in 1880­90 and after 1955, about 30­50 percent of the variance in fertility is due to genetic influences; these influences are substantially smaller for earlier and for interim birth cohorts. Male fertility is generally subject to smaller genetic and larger shared-environment effects than female fertility. Because genetic effects are most prevalent in situations with deliberately controlled fertility and relatively egalitarian socioeconomic opportunities, the authors propose that the genetic dispositions affect primarily fertility behavior and motivations for having children. Analyses of fertility motivations, measured by age of first attempt to have a child, support this interpretation. [25, no. 2 (Jun 99) 253­288]

• Cardiovascular and Tuberculosis Mortality: The Contrasting Effects of Changes in Two Causes of Death

Kevin M. White, graduate student in demography, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania

Tuberculosis was the largest source of deaths among younger adults, and cardiovascular disease among older adults, in the America of 1900. Decreases in deaths from tuberculosis since 1900 and cardiovascular disease since 1940 explain most of the mortality drops in those age groups over the century. This article, building on previous work by White and Preston, shows the results of increased survival from these two causes on the US population structure. Standard demographic cause-specific mortality calculations are used to generate life tables without deaths from cardiovascular disease or tuberculosis. Then fixed rates for these diseases from early in the century are assumed while all other causes of death are allowed to change as they did historically. Improvements in cardiovascular mortality and tuberculosis produce some seemingly illogical contrasts. More people are alive today because of the decrease in tuberculosis. Yet more deaths from cardiovascular disease have been prevented, and cardiovascular improvements have raised life expectancy more. Lower tuberculosis mortality had virtually no effect on the average age of the population. Lower cardiovascular mortality alone has raised that average more than all twentieth-century causes of improved mortality combined. [25, no. 2 (Jun 99) 289­302]

Notes and Commentary

• International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: The Role of the State

Douglas S. Massey, Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor, University of Pennsylvania, and Chair of the Sociology Department. He is currently President-Elect of the American Sociological Association

This note reviews recent theoretical and empirical work on the determinants and efficacy of state immigration policies to draw conclusions about the future direction of policy regimes throughout the globe and their likely effects. An age of increasingly restrictive immigration policies is emerging, but it is still unclear how effective these policies will be in controlling the volume and composition of international migration. States can be located along a continuum of efficacy with respect to the imposition of restrictive policies. Unfortunately, virtually all research done to date has focused on the effectiveness of restrictive policies in major immigrant-receiving developed countries. More research needs to be done to determine just how effective restrictive immigration policies can be under varying degrees of state capacity. [25, no. 2 (Jun 99) 303­322]

Data and Perspectives

• India's Falling Sex Ratios

Peter Mayer, Associate Professor, Politics Department, University of Adelaide, South Australia

The proportion of females in India's population, low compared to other countries, reached its lowest level this century in the 1991 census. India's low sex ratios defined here as the number of females relative to the number of males have been scrutinized for well over a century. The persistent decline in the twentieth century has been the subject of renewed investigation and critical comment over the past two decades. While many explanations for the decline have been offered, almost without exception these have not addressed the causes of the nearly continuous fall observed since 1901. Several possible long-term changes are investigated in this note. The author argues that India's declining sex ratio is primarily an artifact of the dynamics of India's population growth. [25, no. 2 (Jun 99) 323­343]

Archives

• J. R. Hicks on the Economics of Population

Book Reviews

• Past, Present, and Future: A Review Essay on W. W. Rostow, The Great Population Spike and After: Reflections on the 21st Century, reviewed by Paul Streeten
   
• Unraveling the Enigma of the Russian Mortality Crisis: A Review Essay on Charles M. Becker and David Bloom (eds.), The Demographic Crisis in the Former Soviet Union, reviewed by Martin McKee
   
• Richard Stone, Some British Empiricists in the Social Sciences, 1650-1900, reviewed by Mark Perlman
   
• Arup Maharatna, The Demography of Famines: An Indian Historical Perspective, reviewed by Joel Mokyr
   
• Timothy W. Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850-­1914, reviewed by Seamus Grimes
   
• Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania, reviewed by Brooke R. Johnson
   
• Rosalind P. Petchesky and Karen Judd (eds.), Negotiating Reproductive Rights: Women's Perspectives Across Countries and Cultures, reviewed by Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer

Short Reviews

• Adele E. Clarke, Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "the Problems of Sex"
   
• Delia Davin, Internal Migration in Contemporary China
   
• Maithreyi Krishnaraj, Ratna M. Sudarshan, and Abusaleh Shariff (eds.), Gender, Population and Development
   
• Anton Kuijsten, Henk de Gans, and Henk de Feijter (eds.), The Joy of Demography . . . and Other Disciplines: Essays in Honour of Dirk van de Kaa
   
• William Petersen, Malthus: Founder of Modern Demography
   
• Eric B. Ross, The Malthus Factor: Population, Poverty and Politics in Capitalist Development
   
• Nicholas Van Hear, New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities
   
• Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan (eds.), Border Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers

Documents

• CDC on Vaccines and Children's Health: United States 1900–98
   
• WHO on Health and Economic Productivity