Abstracts
December 1999, Vol. 25, No. 4

Articles

• Smallpox in Nineteenth-Century India

Jayant Banthia, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India
Tim Dyson, Professor of Population Studies, London School of Economics

This study uses the large, but neglected, body of Indian historical demographic and health data to show that smallpox was a major killer in past times. At the start of the nineteenth century roughly 80 percent of India's population had no effective protection against the disease, and in these circumstances virtually everyone suffered from it in childhood. The main exception was Bengal, where the indigenous practice of inoculation greatly limited the prevalence of the disease. Smallpox case fatality in India was high—around 25­30 percent in unprotected populations—and significantly higher than estimated for unprotected populations in eighteenth-century Europe. Although vaccination reached India in 1802, the practice spread slowly during the first half of the nineteenth century. From the 1870s onward there were considerable improvements in vaccination coverage. The study demonstrates a close link between the spread of vaccination and the decline of smallpox. Whereas at the start of the nineteenth century the disease may have accounted for more than 10 percent of all deaths in India, by the end of the century smallpox had become a comparatively minor cause of death as a result of improved vaccination coverage.[25, no. 4 (Dec 99): 649–680]

• The Global and Regional Impact of Mortality and Fertility Transitions, 1950–2000

Patrick Heuveline, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and the College, University of Chicago, and Research Associate, Population Research Center, NORC and the University of Chicago

During the second half of the twentieth century, world population grew at a record pace, both in absolute and relative terms, from 2.5 billion to 6 billion (or 1.75 percent annually). Demographers have long identified rapid mortality declines as the main explanation. This article finds that one-fourth of today's world population is alive because of mortality improvements since mid-century. Very rapid growth is unlikely to continue as substantial fertility declines also occurred in recent decades. This article finds that already by the year 2000, these fertility declines have almost exactly compensated for the impact of mortality declines from mid-century levels. This result may suggest homeostasis, but analyses of underlying trends contradict this impression. First, the impact of fertility declines will soon and significantly exceed that of mortality declines. Second, that mortality and fertility declines jointly affect the size of the world population by less than one percent conceals a significant impact on the population's age composition as well as on regional population sizes.[25, no. 4 (Dec 99): 681–702]

• The Persistence of Outmoded Contraceptive Regimes: The Cases of Mexico and Brazil

Joseph E. Potter, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Research Associate, Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

Two of the most striking characteristics of contraceptive practice in the world today are the wide variation in patterns of use across countries and the tendency of the distribution of use by method to persist or narrow, even as new methods become available. The argument advanced in this article is that the disposition to commit to a reduced range of methods results from positive feedback in the process of contraceptive choice, and follows the logic of path dependence. The positive feedback derives, in large part, from social interaction among both the providers and the users of contraceptive methods. The persistence of outmoded contraceptive regimes is illustrated with the experience of Mexico and Brazil. In each case, it is argued that the conditions, events, and policies in the early stage of the adoption process have had a determinant bearing on the contraceptive practice prevailing in the late 1990s. [25, no. 4 (Dec 99): 703–739]

• Longer Life and Population Growth

Joshua R. Goldstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs and Faculty Associate, Office of Population Research, Princeton University
Wilhelm Schlag, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, Princeton University

Enthusiasm about the prospect of large increases in human life expectancy is often dampened by fears that lower mortality will increase population size, hence population pressure. A simple mathematical model of life-cycle stretching demonstrates that if increased longevity is accompanied by later childbearing, a trend that is already underway, future declines in mortality will not increase population size.[25, no. 4 (Dec 99): 741–747]

Notes and Commentary

• The Long-Term Effect of the Timing of Fertility Decline on Population Size

Brian C. O'Neill, Assistant Professor (Research), Watson Institute for International Studies and Center for Environmental Studies, Brown University
Sergei Scherbov, Researcher and Lecturer, Population Research Centre, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Wolfgang Lutz, Leader of the Population Project, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

Existing long-range population projections imply that the timing of the fertility transition has a relatively unimportant effect on long-term population size when compared with the impact of the level at which fertility is assumed eventually to stabilize. However, this note shows that the effect of the timing of fertility decline is a function of the eventual fertility rate: the lower the eventual fertility rate, the greater the effect of the timing of the transition becomes. This finding has important implications for projection methodology, as well as for policies related to the consequences of long-term levels of population size.[25, no. 4 (Dec 99): 749–756]

Data and Perspectives

• Urban Growth in Developing Countries: A Review of Projections and Predictions (PDF)

Martin Brockerhoff, Associate, Policy Research Division, Population Council

Comparison of the United Nations' earliest and most recent projections to the year 2000 suggests that urban and city growth in developing regions has occurred much more slowly than was anticipated as recently as 1980. A modified "urban population explosion" in developing countries since the 1970s conforms to explanatory models of urban growth developed by economists around 1980. Trends in productivity and terms of trade, in particular, have been highly favorable to agriculture as compared to manufacturing, presumably slowing migration to urban centers. Increases in national population growth rates have produced less than commensurate increases in rates of city growth, further supporting an economic and migration-related explanation for unexpectedly slow recent urban growth. Despite the efforts of the United Nations to maintain reliable statistics on urban and city populations, urban population projections should be interpreted with caution because of inadequacies of the data on which they are based. Moreover, current projections that virtually all world population growth in the future will occur in urban areas of developing countries may be misconstrued, if the forces that have retarded urban growth in recent years persist.[25, no. 4 (Dec 99): 757–778]

Archives

• Alfred Marshall on the Growth of Population

Book Reviews

• Christopher Wills, Children of Prometheus: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution, reviewed by Timothy Crippen
   
• Helen Fisher, The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World and Lionel Tiger, The Decline of Males, reviewed by Dennis Hodgson
   
• Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, reviewed by Geoffrey McNicoll
   
• Tom Kirkwood, Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging, reviewed by Kenneth G. Manton
   
• Margo J. Anderson and Stephen E. Fienberg, Who Counts? The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America, reviewed by Harvey M. Choldin
   
• Alain Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning, reviewed by William Petersen
   
• Henk A. de Gans, Population Forecasting 1895–1945: The Transition to Modernity, reviewed by Jochen Fleischhacker
   
• Massimo Livi-Bacci and Gustavo De Santis (eds.), Population and Poverty in the Developing World, reviewed by Stan D'Souza
   
• William A. Jackson, The Political Economy of Population Ageing, reviewed by Emily Grundy
   
• Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market, reviewed by Wang Feng

Short Reviews

• Tom Athanasiou, Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor
   
• Ester Boserup, My Professional Life and Publications 1929–1998
   
• Joachim von Braun, Tesfaye Teklu, and Patrick Webb, Famine in Africa: Causes, Responses, and Prevention
   
• John Brotchie, Peter Newton, Peter Hall, and John Dickey (eds.), East West Perspectives on 21st Century Urban Development: Sustainable Eastern and Western Cities in the New Millennium
   
• Alex de Sherbinin and Victoria Dompka (eds.), Water and Population Dynamics: Case Studies and Policy Implications
   
• Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Plundered Kitchens, Empty Wombs: Threatened Reproduction and Identity in the Cameroon Grassfields
   
• Peter H. Gleick, The World's Water 1998–1999: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources
   
• Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc A. Stern (eds.), Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century
   
• Patricia W. Lunneborg, The Chosen Lives of Childfree Men
   
• Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming
   
• United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 1998 Revision. Volume I: Comprehensive Tables; Volume II: The Sex and Age Distribution of the World Population
   
• US Agency for International Development and US Department of Commerce, World Population Profile: 1998, with a Special Chapter Focusing on HIV/AIDS in the Developing World

Documents

• CDC on Infant and Maternal Mortality in the United States: 1900–99
   
• The HIV/AIDS Epidemic at the End of 1999