- Can Economic Growth Be Sustained? A Post-Malthusian Perspective
Vernon W. Ruttan, Regents Professor Emeritus, Department of Applied Economics and Department of Economics, and Adjunct Professor, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota In the United States and in other economically advanced countries, rapid productivity growth in the material-producing sectors has been the major source of productivity growth for the entire economy. Over the next several decades, continuing structural change will result in a decline in employment in the material-producing sectors to near or below 10 percent. A simulation exercise is employed to demonstrate how continued slow productivity growth in the service sectors dampens the rate of productivity growth of the entire economy. It is unlikely that productivity growth in the US economy can be sustained at anywhere near the relatively high rate achieved since the mid-1990s. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 1–12]
John Bongaarts, Vice President, Policy Research Division, Population Council
Griffith Feeney, consultant to the Population Division of the United Nations Period life expectancy is calculated from age-specific death rates using life table methods that are among the oldest and most widely employed tools of demography. These methods are rarely questioned, much less criticized. Yet changing age patterns of adult mortality in countries with high life expectancy provide a basis for questioning the conventional use of life tables. This article argues that when the mean age at death is rising, period life expectancy at birth as conventionally calculated overestimates life expectancy. Estimates of this upward bias, ranging from 1.6 years for the United States and Sweden to 3.3 years for Japan for 1980–95, are presented. A similar bias in the opposite direction occurs when mean age at death is falling. These biases can also distort trends in life expectancy as conventionally calculated and may affect projected future trends in period life expectation, particularly in the short run. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 13–29]
Susan E. Short, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director, Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, Providence
Feinian Chen, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University, College Station
Barbara Entwisle, Professor of Sociology and Fellow, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Zhai Fengying, Deputy Director and Head, Department of Public Nutrition, Institute of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, Beijing The majority of women in China, including mothers of young children, are in the labor force. This article investigates the relationship between mothers' work and child care and explores how type of work affects level of involvement in children's care. Substantive understandings of the relationship between mothers' work and child care may well depend on the way work is conceptualized and measured, especially nonwage work. Nearly two-thirds of women in China live in rural areas, where nonwage work predominates. Analysis of data from eight provinces indicates that wage workers spend less time in child care, but so do women with heavy nonwage demands. Women's involvement in multiple economic activities has consequences for both work-child care compatibility and work intensity, and may be especially important in efforts to categorize women's work in industrializing economies. Because the majority of the world's women do not work in the wage sector, the implications of these findings extend beyond China. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 31–57]
Kevin M. White, Clinical Fellow in Medicine, Harvard Medical School The advance of life expectancy within high-income countries from 1955 to 1996 is well represented by a straight-line trend. This explains more of the variance on average, and in 19 of 21 high-income countries, than logged or unlogged age-standardized death rates. Change in life expectancy in individual countries over this period was partially predicted by a country's level relative to the rest of this group of high-income countries and partially by a country's own prior rate of advance, with substantial convergence toward the group mean for both measures. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 59–76]
Fred C. Pampel, Professor of Sociology, and Research Associate, Population Program, University of Colorado, Boulder What explains the recent reversal in many countries of century-long trends toward a growing female advantage in mortality? And might the reversal indicate that new roles and statuses of women have begun to harm their health relative to men? Using data on 21 high-income countries that separate smoking deaths from other deaths, this study answers the first question by showing that the reversal in the direction of change in the sex differential results from increased levels of smoking among women relative to men. Using additional cross-national data on cigarette consumption and indicators of gender equality, this article answers the second question in the negative by showing that the declining female advantage in smoking mortality results from patterns of the diffusion of cigarette use rather than from improvements in women's status. Evidence of continued improvement in the female mortality advantage net of smoking deaths, and the likely decline of smoking among women in the future, imply that the recent narrowing of the differential will reverse. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 77–104]
Notes and Commentary Jacques Vallin, Director of Research, Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques, Paris, and President, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Demographic transition theory might seem to imply that, after a period of exceptional population growth resulting from the time lag between mortality and fertility declines, every population, and then the whole world population will stabilize and, consequently, no more acute population problems will appear. Does the claim, recently gaining credibility, that the end of the transition is at hand actually imply a stage without major population problems? Nothing is less sure. First, it is just a claim, the realization of which still entails a period of dramatically rapid population growth in some countries, especially the poorest. But more tellingly, the end of the transition is also the end of the paradigm on which we have been relying to understand and anticipate demographic changes. Nobody knows what might ensue later: How long and low can fertility fall? How long and high can life expectancy increase? How far can population aging go? As many questions without answer and probably as many problems whose size we cannot even imagine lie ahead. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 105–120]
Data and Perspectives Joshua R. Goldstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, and Faculty Associate, Office of Population Research, Princeton University
Guy Stecklov, Lecturer, Department of Population Studies and Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem Recent developments in mathematical demography offer a new, simple means of producing long-range population projections. The well-known extant such projections, produced by the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, rely on elaborate cohort-component projection methods that require a large number of detailed assumptions and are difficult to replicate. Building upon recent results in the formal demography of nonstable populations, the authors show that analytic methods produce estimates of future population size very similar to those obtained through traditional methods. Simplicity is a virtue in making projections, allowing sensitivity tests of assumptions and avoiding the misleading impression of precision associated with more complicated methods. Cohort-component methods should still be used for short- and medium-term forecasts and projections. For the long term, however, analytic methods should supplement or even replace traditional projections. [28, no. 1 (Mar 02): 121–141]
- August Lösch on Population and Business Cycles
- Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect, reviewed by Tom Fricke
- Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel (eds.), A Population History of North America, reviewed by Myron P. Gutmann
- Jacob S. Siegel, Applied Demography: Applications to Business, Government, Law, and Public Policy, reviewed by Peter A. Morrison
- Alain Blum and France Guérin-Pace, Des lettres et des chiffres: Des tests d'intelligence à l'évaluation du « savoir lire »,un siècle de polémiques, reviewed by Isabelle Attané
- Iris Chi, Neena L. Chappell, and James Lubben (eds.), Elderly Chinese in Pacific Rim Countries: Social Support and Integration
- Wayne A. Cornelius, Thomas J. Espenshade, and Idean Salehyan (eds.), The International Migration of the Highly Skilled: Demand, Supply, and Development Consequences in Sending and Receiving Countries
- Bimal Ghosh (ed.), Managing Migration: Time for a New International Regime?
- Institute of Medicine, Forum on Emerging Infections, Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Global to the Local Perspective: Workshop Summary
- Hans-Peter Kohler, Fertility and Social Interaction: An Economic Perspective
- David Kyle and Rey Koslowski (eds.), Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives
- Brian C. O'Neill, F. Landis MacKellar, and Wolfgang Lutz, Population and Climate Change
- Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
- Thomas Spira, Nationalism and Ethnicity Terminologies: An Encyclopedic Dictionary and Research Guide, vol. 1
- Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population
- Economic Report of the President: Strengthening Retirement Security
- Major Natural Catastrophes, 1950–2001
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