Kenneth Prewitt, Director, U.S. Census Bureau The US decennial census was initiated in 1790 to facilitate nation-building tasks, especially that of reconfiguring political representation as the population grew and settled new territories. To this basic task of power distribution have been added other key governmental functions, such as the use of census data in guiding revenue sharing and in the enforcement of nondiscriminatory policies. Throughout its history the census has been the focus of partisan clashes. Following the identification of the "differential undercount"—a measure of how census coverage differs across demographic groups and geographic areas—the partisan battles intensified, and in recent decades have come to focus not just on how the census counts are used but how the census data are collected. It has been argued that census methodology could be designed to predetermine given partisan outcomes, and for the 2000 census this charge shifted from "could be" to "was being." The Census Bureau has taken extraordinary steps to demonstrate that no partisan considerations have affected the design or implementation of the census, and that its decisions are based solely on the best technical judgment available.[26, no. 1 (Mar 00) 116]
Melissa Leach, Fellow, Environment Group, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
James Fairhead, Reader, Department of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Many influential analyses of West Africa take it for granted that "original" forest cover has progressively been converted and savannized during the twentieth century by growing populations. By testing these assumptions against historical evidence, exemplified for Ghana and Ivory Coast, this article shows that these neo-Malthusian deforestation narratives badly misrepresent people-forest relationships. They obscure important nonlinear dynamics, as well as widespread anthropogenic forest expansion and landscape enrichment. These processes are better captured, in broad terms, by a neo-Boserupian perspective on population-forest dynamics. However, comprehending variations in locale-specific trajectories of change requires fuller appreciation of social differences in environmental and resource values, of how diverse institutions shape resource access and control, and of ecological variability and path dependency in how landscapes respond to use. The second half of the article presents and illustrates such a "landscape structuration" perspective through case studies from the forest-savanna transition zones of Ghana and Guinea.[26, no. 1 (Mar 00) 1743]
Simon Szreter, University Lecturer in History and Fellow, St. John's College, Cambridge. He is currently a Research Fellow of the UK Economic and Social Research Council
Eilidh Garrett, Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure This article offers a radical reinterpretation of the chronology of control over reproduction in England's history. It argues that, as a result of post-World War II policy preoccupations, there has been too narrow a focus in the literature on the significance of reductions in marital fertility. In England's case this is conventionally dated to have occurred from 1876, long after the industrial revolution. With a wider-angle focus on "reproduction," the historical evidence for England indicates that family planning began much earlier in the process of economic growth. Using a "compositional demography" approach, a novel social pattern of highly prudential, late marriage can be seen emerging among the bourgeoisie in the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There is also evidence for a more widespread resort to such prudential marriage throughout the population after 1816. When placed in this context, the reduction in national fertility indexes visible from 1876 can be seen as only a further phase, not a revolution, in the population's management of its reproduction.[26, no. 1 (Mar 00) 4580]
Margaret E. Greene, Senior Program Associate, Center for Health and Gender Equity, Takoma Park, Maryland
Ann E. Biddlecom, Research Investigator, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan Both men and women are important actors in bringing children into life, yet demographic studies on reproduction have tended to focus on women alone. The aims of this article are: 1) to describe why men have attracted limited interest as subjects of such research; 2) to evaluate existing research on men's roles in developing countries; and 3) to suggest directions for future research on male reproductive roles. Men, once neglected, are now included in research on fertility but from a narrow, overly problem-oriented perspective. A review of the literature, however, raises questions about the adequacy of a problem--oriented approach. The authors argue that demography should focus on men not only as women's partners, but also as individuals with distinct reproductive histories. In situations, now increasingly common, where the links between marriage and childbearing erode, the differences in men's and women's reproductive experiences and the costs and benefits of parenting will become more salient for future research.[26, no. 1 (Mar 00) 81115]
Notes and Commentary John C. Caldwell, Emeritus Professor of Demography, Australian National University, Canberra Half the AIDS victims in the world are in East and Southern Africa, where adult HIV seroprevalence was 11.4 percent by the end of 1997 and over 25 percent in two countries of Southern Africa. HIV/AIDS infection is not the result of ignorance, as nearly everyone has sufficient knowledge about AIDS and how it is transmitted. The high levels of AIDS arise from the failure of African political and religious leaders to recognize social and sexual reality. The means for containing and conquering the epidemic are already known, and could prove effective if the leadership could be induced to adopt them. The lack of individual behavioral change and of the implementation of effective government policy has roots in attitudes to death and a silence about the epidemic arising from beliefs about its nature and the timing of death. International responsibility may have to be taken before the needed effective policies are put in place.[26, no. 1 (Mar 00) 117135]
Data and Perspectives Ronald Lee, Professor of Demography and Economics, University of California at Berkeley According to a report recently issued by the Technical Panel for the US Social Security Administration, the long-term financial outlook for the system is worse than previously thought. The worsening projected by the panel in the long-run funding imbalance of the Social Security System is mostly due to the recommendation by the panel to add an extra four years to the currently projected increase in life expectancy by 2075: from 81.8 years to 85.9 years. The panel recommended no change in the current intermediate projected long-run TFR of 1.9 and net immigration of 900,000 persons per year. The recommendation to increase the projected gains in life expectancy was based on international trends as well as on historical trends in the United States and the absence of biological evidence ruling out such gains. Industrial countries have a history of under-predicting the growth of their elderly population, and it is expected that large mortality adjustments may be needed in the projections for public pension programs also in industrial countries other than the United States.[26, no. 1 (Mar 00) 137143]
- Emile Zola Against Malthusianism
- Freedom and Welfare: A Review Essay on Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, reviewed by Paul Streeten
- Rocky Mountain Visions: A Review Essay on Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution, reviewed by Vaclav Smil
- George J. Borjas, Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy, reviewed by Thomas J. Espenshade
- Douglas S. Massey, Joaquín Arango, Graeme Hugo, Ali Kouaouci, Adela Pellegrino, and J. Edward Taylor, Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium, reviewed by Demetrios G. Papademetriou
- Alison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, reviewed by James Horn
- Joseph P. Ferrie, Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum United States 1840-1860, reviewed by Tony Waters
- Francine M. Deutsch, Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works, reviewed by Jennifer Glass
- Orley Ashenfelter and David Card (eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics, Volume 3
- Paul Boyle, Keith Halfacree, and Vaughan Robinson, Exploring Contemporary Migration
- Weixing Chen, The Political Economy of Rural Development in China, 1978-1999
- David A. Crocker and Toby Linden (eds.), Ethics of Consumption: The Good Life, Justice, and Global Stewardship
- James Z. Lee and Wang Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000
- Jonathan M. Mann and Daniel J. M. Tarantola (eds.), AIDS in the World II: Global Dimensions, Social Roots, and Responses
- Julian L. Simon, The Economic Consequences of Immigration, Second Edition
- SOPEMI, Trends in International Migration: Continuous Reporting System on Migration. Annual Report, 1999 Edition
- Jacqueline Stevens, Reproducing the State
- United Nations Development Programme, China, The China Human Development Report
- United Nations, Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Survey of Europe 1999, No. 1
- Kathleen S. Uno, Passages to Modernity: Motherhood, Childhood, and Social Reform in Early Twentieth Century Japan
- The Census Bureau on Prospects for US Population Growth in the Twenty-First Century
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